You omitted the rest of Gavin's comment that succinctly points towards the technical reasons why this change is necessary now and timely ... (to suit your own agenda?)
Bitcoin is not appropriate for transactions less than a penny or three.
If Moore's Law continues to hold, then one day it might be.
That is all out of scope for this pull request; if we do nothing, then we are stuck with MIN_RELAY_TX_FEE=0.0005 BTC.