Honestly, if >1MB blocks are this controversial then BitcoinXT will just stay what it is - a minor fork of bitcoin core run by no one except testers.
Say what you will about one side or another, but the ideas discussed and the questions brought up are important.
How best to handle opposing views?
How to hard fork bitcoin intentionally?
What does consensus mean?
I don't think debating it ad nauseum is best. Debate, disagree and if both sides can't meet - put the software out and let the nodes/mining/coins (economic momentum) decide. Bitcoin is bigger than any 1-2 or even 20 developers to decide on their own, no matter how capable they may be in their own right.
Say what you will about one side or another, but the ideas discussed and the questions brought up are important.
How best to handle opposing views?
How to hard fork bitcoin intentionally?
What does consensus mean?
I don't think debating it ad nauseum is best. Debate, disagree and if both sides can't meet - put the software out and let the nodes/mining/coins (economic momentum) decide. Bitcoin is bigger than any 1-2 or even 20 developers to decide on their own, no matter how capable they may be in their own right.
The "economic momentum" will follow the economic power/majority, which belongs to those willing to spend/risk the most coins attacking the other side. Effectiveness of the coins spent/risked also depends on relative position as defender or attacker.
BTC is designed to grant all possible advantages to defenders of its status quo. Combine that fact with MPEX's Smaug-like hoarde of ancient coins, and then multiply the effect by the leverage the Gavincoin Short provides to the chain with smaller blocks:
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I think debating it ad nauseum is best (for Bitcoin), precisely because "the ideas discussed and the questions brought up are important."
As the debate rages endlessly more people become informed about Bitcoin's properties, both at the internal crypto-magic (uxto/mempool/createnewblock/relay/RBF) and external systemic (consensus/opposition/controversy/Gavincoin Short) levels.
XT isn't run "by no one except testers." That would have been the appropriate traditional approach, but Gavin and Mike decided to it was better to force the issue by prematurely escalating XT to a troll/attack fork, complete with its own core-dev-free github. So XT is being run by Gavinistas determined to impose on the rest of us, external to the BIP/consensus process, their own pet hard fork.
The endless debate (which has gone on harmlessly for the past ~5 years) usefully creates something asymptotically approaching clarity, as well as counterplans.
Now instead of just XT, we have on the shelf and ready to go Plans B, C, etc. in the form of BIP100, 101, and so on.
I suspect we agree that should 1MB blocks become an undeniably urgent concern (EG, if we see actual congestion resulting in appropriate fees no longer prioritizing their tx) the controversy will rapidly dissipate and be replaced by emergent rough consensus.
As much as I believe in BTC's antifragility, Gavin's XT line in the sand (with its absurdly low, unverifiable "75%" opt-in trigger) has the potential to result in the kind of black swan chaos that may be the Kryptonite to BTC's nigh-invincible Superman.