[Al Skierkiewicz]

Jason,
In my mind this is not a change, merely restating what has been the rule for some time. When looking at the power protection scheme, each Spike is fed with #18 wire which must be protected by a 20 amp breaker. It is the wire that is being protected. If you look at a failure mode in one of the Spikes, a dead short, then no more than 20 amps may flow in the #18 during this event. Should a short occur at the output of the Spike then the onboard fuse will blow. Following along that line, even four or five valves connected to the output of a Spike will still blow the fuse if one of them fails or the wiring becomes shorted. So let's go further, one or more of the solenoids either become damaged or just naturally shorts a few turns due to a manufacuring defect. The current starts to rise in the branch protected by only one breaker. Not ideal but maybe not enough to trip the breaker.
Now let's take it one more step, a team decides that if it is OK to hook up multiple Spikes to the same breaker if they are connected to solenoids then it must be OK to hook up a motor as well. (Believe me, this kind of deductive reasoning crosses the inspection table all the time.) Before you know it, you have a team running all the Spikes from one or two breakers and a van door motor as well. Of course, during practice there is no problem but the team starts having breakers tripping during a crucial match and suddenly a little curl of smoke appears.
I am more happy that this rule is in place to protect rookies and those teams that do not have electrical mentors. As you say the GDC has done a wonderful job and in this case, the rule keeps teams playing when they might otherwise have a failed robot. Robots that stay running are a benefit to all teams. There are no rules that I know of that are written to make inspections easier.