It will be very insulting to people with hundreds of thousands or even millions SPR (maybe there are some) when they figure out some time in November they missed to claim their dough...
In my opinion, if you lose the opportunity to claim your HLM stake because you are not aware of the current development it's your fault. If the intention of the developers is to maximize decentralization I would make it compulsory to have to claim. The worst thing for a decentralised coin with masternodes is a few bagholders with tons of coins.