By definition, a *unexpected* difference in behavior between the old client and the new client is a bug in the new client.
Props to everyone who recognized this and did the right thing to correct it. This only strengthens my faith in Bitcoin.
How can we prevent this from happening in the future and is there any other way the average user can contribute to the robustness of bitcoin?
Keep your software updated.
Terrible advice for a project like Bitcoin.
From what I can gather it seems to me like the database used by 0.8 is much more superior, so it will be used. But in order to patch 0.8 it seems like an artificial cap will be placed on the block size so that 0.8.1 is compatible with older versions.
This sounds like the way forward.