btw the recent update is a soft fork yet will still go into effect only with 95% hashpower.
Yet XT will hard fork with only 75%.
Trying to fork without consensus is damaging and irresponsible. Bitcoin was designed to prevent a majority forcing their will on a minority (if it comes to that).
I hope the contentious hard fork will not be successful.
It is impossible for a majority to force their will on a minority in Bitcoin, you can simply choose not to run the code. Saying that we must have an absolute consensus is damaging and irresponsible
95% is not absolute consensus. 75% is too low.
And yes the intention is to force me as a Bitcoin user onto XT/ 101 big blocks. The hypothetical intention as clearly stated by Gavin is to create hard fork with the thinking that remaining services and miners will move onto the new fork and the old one will die. Anybody who is not happy (and that would no doubt be at least a significant minority) will be left with nothing and forced to use big blocks.