Very well put - and great summary overall. Exactly what I was thinking about "biting them in the ass". (Well, "me" in the ass as well cos I have a few Ether floating around LoL, though I didn't invest in the DAO cos something like this was about as predictable as a storm in winter).

I saw it the other way from you though - I thought the only right thing to do was to not fork since the principles of isolating the rest of the network from the logic of any particular DAP were paramount and by forking you would be breaking something that has actually worked, since the failure resides wholly within the logic of the DAO code (which I think is written in Solidity). Thats where the risk should stay as well (and will stay unless they fork the entire Ethereum blockchain).

However, you're taking more humanitarian view which may be a more grown up approach right enough. i.e. "just give the people their money since the whole thing's f*cked anyway and it'll minimise the misery".

The problem with that is that if you break those underlying principles of a scripting platform blockchain (isolation of logic and risk) their "money" might not be worth anything anyway.

Massive catch 22.