These are some principles that any potential hard fork must not violate:
- The network must remain substantially decentralized.
- The inflation schedule must be the same or lower/slower. (Though I'm not 100% sure whether lowering inflation would be OK.)
- No one should be allowed by design to steal your money.
- As much as reasonably possible, no one should be able to prevent you from spending your money.
- Anonymity should be at least possible.
I will oppose any unsafe hard fork, even if it's proposed by Gavin. I and the sites I have some hand in are independent of the dev group, the Bitcoin Foundation, and other companies/organizations. I don't know whether Gavin's current proposal is safe, so the only thing I'm doing now is recommending caution.
Indeed, this is still a mess that needs to be sorted out, as long as the fundamental properties and the decentralization and security of the network are secured I see any changes to improve it as reasonable but to be approached with caution.