News reports are notoriously inaccurate. It's not an accident investigation. People come to all kinds of conclusions!
A ROPS must have some kind of certification to represent some standard of safety. Otherwise, I'm sure off shore manufacturers would build them to look solid but out of soup can material.
I would have no problem welding onto a rops, and drilling enough holes into it to make it look like swiss cheese, I am sure it would still perform it's function, just no longer be certified.
We are not talking about a D10 for crying out loud! Some people just don't get stuff like that, clearly!