And this (Not Bitcoin XT) is exactly why contentious hard forks are doomed. Andresen and Hearn should grow a pair and bootstrap their own altcoin from scratch instead of trying to piggyback Bitcoin Core's network effect.
Cry me a river. Maybe you should grow a pair !
Bitcoin is a decentralized system.
If you don't like the work Mike does, don't use it! If you don't like the direction he's going with that work, write some code yourself that goes in a different direction. If you don't like where "core" Bitcoin client development is "going", go to
http://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin and hit the "Fork" button and convince other people to join your development effort.
You people seriously misunderstand how Bitcoin works...