In general, I try to avoid adding to heated discussions unless I have something very relevant to add. To that end, I'd like to remind everyone, especially those considering devoting their time to packaging MATE in Debian, that Josselin Mouette is only expressing his opinions in a personal capacity. Ultimately, packages are included or excluded from Debian based on the guidelines expressed in the Debian Policy Manual. The responsibility for interpreting those guidelines falls on members of the ftp-master, who have the thankless job of processing packages in the NEW queue. As such, any package that follows those guidelines should be accepted into Debian, regardless of any philosophical misgivings that individual Debian developers may express on the ITP thread.
For more information, see the following: