(Then there is the possibility
that someone is dogmatic for no good reason, but is extremely rare IMO.)
It would help in understanding during discussion if someone who is
dogmatic would *state the reason* (good or otherwise) for why they are
vociferously holding their stance. :-)
A long time ago, I was in a discussion with a committer about something
that a few of us thought was a perfectly reasonable request for
enhancement. In the Bugzilla discussion, no matter how I asked the
questions and tried to interpret his responses, I couldn't get a sense
of what was the underlying reason he thought he shouldn't entertain the
request in any release. It seemed as if some philosophy was in his
reason, but we came away with no more understanding of what the
philosophy was.
Pragmatically, I recognize that a good reason is "not enough resources
for this request for this release", just as much as "that's not
backwards compatible and would break existing adopters". I do want to
learn what the underlying reasons are, so that I can learn and
contribute more intelligently.