http://qntra.net/2015/01/the-hard-fork-missile-crisis/"... Today Gavin posted on his personal blog an article titled "Looking before the Scaling Up Leap", stating "My goal is to prove that it is safe to raise the maximum block size from 1MB to at least 20MB" along with "I'll argue we should schedule a hard fork." Reddit soon blindly praised Gavin for his work, with comments such as "Fork it hard."
It appears as if Gavin will not give up unless his hard fork is a reality, and thus Mircea Popescu has made a declaration of war if Gavin proceeds with his plans. ..."
http://trilema.com/2015/if-you-go-on-a-bitcoin-fork-irrespective-which-scammer-proposes-it-you-will-lose-your-bitcoins/"... To make it perfectly clear : in no case will MPEx accept this fake Bitcoin, as it's not accepted any other fake Bitcoin to date, and for the exact reasons. Moreover, my budget to sink this scam exceeds the budget of everyone involved on the supporting side.vi That is all. ..."
So, Gavin, do you really want to lose little people their coins? Or could you just let it drop?
To speak the truth, a real hard fork is very difficult now even if it is required. There is a high chance that the forked one will become an alt coin, just because nodes will not update them. Is there any data about the nodes regarding the versions they are running now ? That may give some idea about how ready we are for a hard fork.
I don't think a hard fork would be very difficult, but only if the following two points are taken into account:
- Support for the fork should be overwhelming. If 95% of the users agree with the fork, the 5% that don't are pretty much forced to participate. Sure, they can keep running the non-forked version, but coins on that chain will be unlikely to keep their value. Of course, in practice, non all participants are equal and if major players such as large mining pools, BitPay, Coinbase, BC.I, major exchanges, etc... join either side, it doesn't matter that much what individual users choose.
- The fork should be announced and the software released long before the blockchain is forked. Users and companies need time to deploy the software, make modifications specific to their business, test for issues, etc...