that's a good question, and something I've wondered about.
It could be that he was naive and actually believed such a change could be effected later, before the community grew too large.
or it could be that it was just hand waving to pacify the critics. And he didn't actually intend to make such a change.
It doesn't really matter now.
What is actually most curious to me at the moment is why some of you get so bent out of shape about me expressing my opinion on this.
oh, and btw, my opinion on the topic has nothing to do with OP or this thread, contrary to an earlier assertion by, I think agent.
I don't believe he was a fool, thus I **personally** believe he had an idea it would exist in perpetuity, or at any rate be hard to change later.
Then why would he have proffered his famous suggestion?
It can be phased in, like:
if (blocknumber > 115000)
maxblocksize = largerlimit
It can start being in versions way ahead, so by the time it reaches that block number and goes into effect, the older versions that don't have it are already obsolete.
When we're near the cutoff block number, I can put an alert to old versions to make sure they know they have to upgrade.