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I saw that one of the reasons offered for no hold-open on the magazines was that the bolt would batter the follower and render it useless.
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Unless the reason is being offered by the designer himself, or one of the design team engineers, or someone who spoke directly with one of them, or its in their notes and design specs, then its just someone's opinion of what they think the designer(s) intended. Sometimes it's right, often its not.
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Inasmuch as the 30-round Korean era mags had a hold open follower, the idea that the follower could not take the battering and therefore, was not included as a feature of the 15-rounders, makes no sense to me.
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I agree, it SEEMS to make no sense. But there are a lot of things that happen in our world that seem to make no sense. Some of them do, only after fully understanding all the details and decisions that went into them, and some of them never do, even with all the detail history known and documented.
It could very well be a case of the initial design didn't have feature X, simply because the customer didn't specifically request it. Contracts get let, items get made, and pretty soon you've got a few thousand or hundred thousand in the hands of users.
Once there, and users giving feed back that "it sure would be nice /better if it did this..." and what sometimes happens is the makers say "hmm yeah, ok, we'll include that on the next version".
The 30 rnd carbine magazine was designed for the M2 (select fire) carbine. It is quite possible it has an "improved" follower that would "survive battering" as a bolt hold open device. Such a detail may or may not be in the history books.
Lots of myths, including outrageous BS, get entrenched and repeated as fact. Several about the M16 are very common even to this day. And, lots of people still think and get told you don't need to aim a shotgun...etc..