In this case, I think the behavior change is justified because the existing behavior is pretty much useless. E.g., on the command line:

```
ddeleo@lorentz symlinks > chmod -h 0000 link.txt 
ddeleo@lorentz symlinks > cat link.txt 
hello
ddeleo@lorentz symlinks > ls -halp link.txt 

ls: link.txt: Permission denied
l---------  1 ddeleo  wheel    12B Jun 26 10:53 link.txt
```

Given the use case we're trying to support (user accidentally managing a symlink that she didn't know was a symlink), managing permissions on the real file is almost 100% certainly what the user wants.