I score this for Mike.
He's made a strong case for what the original vision was, and maybe from the perspective of "social contract" that should be kept regardless of whether it is viewed as the "best thing" for Bitcoin. Obviously opinions strongly differ on the latter, and maybe that has to do with the context of us now living in a post-Snowden era which didn't exist when that "original vision" was defined. But the argument against the original vision being nodes all in data centers, most people using SPV, etc. is getting very thin.
Hearn has always been quite brilliant about this stuff and much more far sighted than most. Not only that but he has demonstrated the energy and ability to make his visions come at least close to reality. (No shit about this, BTW.)
I do hope that people analyze the path forward and make the decision which is best for them about which fork to follow.if they have much choice in the matter. By now the various visions for the future are much more defined than they were even half a year ago so there is no excuse for people not to put up or shut up. Fork it soon please!
I will mention again that I am willing to entertain a
proof-of-burn to migrate to a solution which holds to and enhances the aspects of Bitcoin which appealed to me when I first got into it. What would be groovy would be to do it in such a way that the XT folks could
re-mine the things. This would be good to get more people more interested in XT and jump on that bandwagon (and hopefully stop stinking up ours.)