Github user mosermw commented on the issue:
https://github.com/apache/nifi/pull/2767
One never knows how a dataflow manager will design their flow, so I was
just trying to cover all bases. I don't think a downstream consumer would
notice that the failure files were penalized, but if someone did loop their
failure relationship, they would certainly notice if a failed file wan't
penalized.
I can remove the call to penalize.---
