Maybe, but Shimano learned from this mistake. Moving the freewheel was a bad idea, but implementing index type shifting wasn't. Shimano realized that the american rider wanted index shifting, learned from their mistake and came out with SIS in 1985. They caught Suntour, Campagnolo and the French by surprize, then buried them.
I'm not defending Positron one bit, but it was that mistake that led to the huge success of SIS. Shimano, to their credit, studied the failure and learned from it. Sadly, Suntour was caught off guard and never recovered and eventually was sold off.