The "hard forks should only happen in exigent circumstances, and may never be elective" position certainly has my sympathy, but my default support wavers when you start irrationally distorting, twisting, and misrepresenting the arguments in favor of the opposite approach.
Not gonna lie though, it makes me sick to see Luke state that this is to appease the industry. Why pander to them? They can learn how to make their model profitable or fuck off and die. Coinbase, Bitpay, Blockchain.info can't innovate, can't provide the revenue dream they sold to their investors? So they blame the tech, thinking big blocks and maybe a good ol' change of the guard will re-kindle their bankrupt "cheap transactions = mass adoption = profit" business plan. We should be boycotting these companies for their CEOs' complete and utter retardedness, constantly running their mouths about that which they clearly do not understand (or worse). I just wish someone would one-up Brian Armstrong, who compared incompatible bitcoin versions to Firefox and Internet Explorer -- but that one is hard to beat.
+1 I'm sick too. Had too much pop corn.
Btw dear ICY, I'm not misrepresenting, for one's simple question luke's answer is pretty straightforward:
asciilifeform: normally folks going hard-forking have some specific idea of why...
luke-jr: asciilifeform: to show the industry that a hardfork and consensus is a possible thing
Luke has willingly and maybe innocently committed to instigate more uncertainty and drama in bitcoin's ecosystem instead of focusing in moving on now that their had they segwit thing out.
But them roundtable fools have been cornered by mining cartels (3 to 4 corps) to release some dummy hard fork if they were to implement them core baby segwit in the first place. And now Luke's wandering in the sea of bitcoin's community selling his shit like a mere door to door girlscout selling brownies. And that's bullshit i'm not keen on buying.
If the industry wants a hark fork, let them write whatever shit code they think they could force down the protocol's throat with them buncha ego tripping corporations whining for "progress" and deluding themselves as being relevant in bitcoin.
Also, Gmax, much appreciated your inputs. Glad you are still around!
Not only does a hardfork seem to be absolutely unnecessary, it should not be attempted unless it is absolutely necessary.
Accordingly, from my little understanding regarding technicalities (such as coding), the difference between a hard fork and a soft fork is either: 1) largely political or 2) in instances in which there is such a major technical flaw that you gotta force immediate and complete adoption because of such emergency technical change.
If there is some other major reason for a hard fork that I am leaving out, then please advise.
Anyhow, it seems that attempting a hardfork to merely show that it can be done is a ploy that would undermine bitcoin's governance.. which is not necessary and not broken.
n°2 is correct and is the only legit scenario for pushing the nuclear button.
n°1 is a deadend.