In your view, do you think it's possible/probable that Gavin and Hearn have been compromised in some way, working for a different agenda than that which they started out with?
Andresen hasn't changed at all. It's been obvious from the beginning that his primary motivation is power, money, control and then some more power. Everything he's done from the media spotlight to centralizing control of Bitcoin in the hands of the foundation has been aimed at that. Refuse to agree with him and prepare to be attacked. I guess no one can remember his behavior during the BIP16/17 arguments. He's a sad little man that controlled Bitcoin's direction for too long.
That's my impression too, that he has some serious daddy issues (strong belief in authority, overwhelming desire for approval from perceived authority/father figures). Yet, when Satoshi left, he said that "it's in good hands with Gavin and the others". A severe error in judgment, or subsequent co-opting by perceived authority figures (e.g. CIA)?
The same question (of agenda/motivation) applies to Mike Hearn, who obviously is also a very strong believer in "authority", and seems to have no problem whatsoever with the banksters and their centralized debt-based money mega-scam.
I think tvbcof has a fascinating hypothesis about this:
I actively entertain the hypothesis that Hearn (and now Andresen to some extent) are associated with the shadowy Conformal entity who has their own clean-slate implementation of the Bitcoin protocol 'btcd'. For a few months they were pushing pretty hard to have Bitcoin shift over to their implementation with the argument that it is 'better' in some ways (and I personally don't doubt that it is.) 'justusranvier' was most active in pushing it, but he seems to have disappeared from this forum.
If this hypothesis is basically valid then it would make a lot of sense for someone in Hearn's position to try to do as much damage to the 'satoshi-based' protocol support structures as possible on his way out the door.
Interesting... You may have noticed how, of the early/core developers, the most brown-nosing of perceived authority appear to be Hearn and Gavin... i.e. they are the most "conformal". These people cannot get their heads (or noses) out of the fatherly figure of the state, which cryptographic decentralization protocols like Bitcoin have emerged precisely to render technologically obsolete and irrelevant. Do you have a more developed theory or theoretical scenario of your hypothesis?
tvbcof is right of course. I said years ago that Andresen was being controlled and controlling Bitcoin for a private parties interest and to further his own career. I was attacked back then because everyone on this forum considered Andresen to be the reincarnation of the Christ child. If you look at the founding membership of TBF you can easily see the actors attempting to control Bitcoin and the associated windfall of this new technology. I said so many things against Andresen, Pirate@40, Clipse, Goat, LukeJr, Tycho, Nefario and others that I eventually ditched my nick and came back as QA. Bitcoin is about money. Most people can rationalize supporting the devil himself if the devil is making them money. Morality and what's true and right take second place to lining ones pocket. All of the people I slammed, at some point, were either perceived as making the group money or actually making the group money.