Retired F4, I did not mean to infer that we shouldn't be discussing the Airbus flight controls in general or autotrim in particular; quite the opposite - it absolutely needs to be discussed to gain understanding. Given your experience and information you posses, your points are very valid and true. However, methinks that your perspective is somewhat lacking breadth. It is indeed true that having autotrim stop at stall warning would make AF447 behave differently - whether it would significantly affect the outcome is open to conjecture. Problem is we don't have infinite amount of cheese to patch up all holes. Patching up one, more often than not opens other holes. As DP Davies has beautifully demonstrated when analyzing pushers, every safety system is potential killer and risks an benefits have to be weighed carefully, especially cases of "operating when not needed" vs. "failing to operate when required". Before AF 447 there was nothing to suggest that autotrim concept as applied to FBW Airbi is flawed and I guess that even after final report is out it won't change.
The statement, that they shouldn´t have got in this situation beforehand is correct, but it is not the way to look at the things in accident investigation and accident prevention and in view of flight safety.
It actually is but is not be-all and end-all. Obedient trim has good chances to be listed as one of fifity-something or more contributing factors but we shouldn't concentrate solely or it or ignore it completely. Balance has to be struck somewhere, not necessarily in the middle. As I see it, it was just a footnote in the history of certain crew that became (in)famous through spectacular error.
The biggest problem I see in discussions regarding the unwholesome fate of AF447 is that we are faced with horrible picture of three pilots who forgot how to fly in the midair so we are amusing ourselves with tiny technical details just to avoid to step back and face the sheer ugliness of the event.
Did I just blame the deceases pilots for the calamity? On purely technical grounds: no! I don't care a little bit about earthly theories of fault and blame but I do want that whatever daemon of the air got our unlucky colleagues gets caught and dissected and we won't be able to catch it if we put our traps in the places it doesn't visit.
It's not technical, it's in our heads.