This is a shameful display of censorship and close mindedness of the Core developers. This just further proves that we need alternative implementations of Bitcoin so that important discussions and issues are not just censored and ignored.
To quote Mike Hearn from this discussion: i'm sorry but you cannot have a situation where there is only one implementation, where that implementation has one guy making the decisions, and then expect people to not engage in argument and debate about decisions being made or not made.
I agree with Mike Hearn on this point and he should not have been banned for saying this. It is completely unjustified and undeserved to ban him for saying this. Having one person deciding on changes within Bitcoin and having five more people with veto power over the development is an untenable position for Bitcoin especially if we want Bitcoin to be truly decentralized. Multiple competing implementations of Bitcoin is the solution to the political problems we are currently experiencing.
"Multiple competing implementations of Bitcoin"...Is this possible, when we need a "vote" of 51% or higher for the network to verify blocks of any particular max size?
(Sorry, if I'm behind on current events)It is possible as long as the implementations are fully compatible with the Bitcoin protocol. However in the case of a change that is fundamental to the protocol, which makes previous versions incompatible with the new version is a hard fork. Increasing the blocksize will require a hard fork whether it is done by Core or an alternative implementation. Hypothetically it is possible if there was enough disagreement that Bitcoin could split, there would then be two Bitcoins essentially. This should not nesserally be seen as a 51% attack but more as an act of freedom and expression of personal beliefs. This avoids the problem of the tyranny of the majority. Cryptocurreny as a whole will therefore always remain free as long as enough people choose freedom.