We can't both be quite happy with how things are changing, because one of us keeps frantically trying to protect the status quo
We'd just all be happy if you could leave Bitcoin alone and take care of your altcoins.
Quite. To put it succinctly:
http://therealbitcoin.org/ml/btc-dev/2015-December/000184.htmlany implementation that does not validate the entire blockchain during initial sync, including transaction signatures, may not be considered a Bitcoin client
How hard is that to understand?