(the ways of bitcoin devs of any flavor are mysterious to me)

I think there are a lot of early adopters who have already seen so much life-changing profit that they are relatively indifferent to progress and merely want to preserve what they have. Subliminally, of course. Publicly they all take certain stances but how many of them are seriously set in their views and wouldn't change if the new circumstances were favorable to them? I wager not many.