I dont see it like that, I see Gmaxwell plowing ahead with his SideChains with full intent to implement the change to Bitcoin regardless of introducing new protocol intensives to take transactions off chain and the resulting economic consequence, this very action is a hostile takeover by Blockstream.

that said, it's always been that no one can force users to use a modified version of Bitcoin if development becomes centralized, saying "it'll never happen it's oven-source, we'll just fork the code". well its now centralized, Gmaxwell has been very vocal in promoting the fact that Gavin has no voice in the development of Bitcoin and is in the minority, and is quick to say he is not a Lead Developer, while technical true, he has taken on a self proclaimed role of Lead Scientist, in my view a more general and holistic vantage point.

there is lots of misinformation out there, and I don't see the masses getting involved in this debate, just looking at the pols people keep talking about, there are at most a few 100 or so voters, while Coinbase boast over 3M individual wallets that's a lot of early adopters invested in Bitcoin - ( i imagine that is 1 or 2 wallets per user) and we are not seeing them push for the changes.

at the end of the day Bitcoin incentives are driven by the economic majority, not a centralized core group, the economic majority will promote the incentive sachems that are the most beneficial to the largest audience to maximize there return. even miners shouldn't be have a voice like they do in this debate.