The problems with Devcoin are with the math behind it. There is infinitely many Devcoins but finite shares and a decreasing share value over time.
Monetary base supply isn't really a problem: inflation slows down with time, so that eventually it will be negligible.
The flaw with Devcoin is because there is infinitely many it's so inflationary that you cannot save your Devcoins from work you did months ago so that you can be competitive with workers 10 months from now, but instead 10 months from now you'll have to work even harder for even less coins?
Well, the idea was that more shares are allocated once Devcoins get more and more valuable. So basically as more and more people start using Devcoin it gets more valuable and allows more people to work for Devcoin bounties.
What is broken is Devtome bounty allocation.
I'll remind you that the idea was to do projects which will increase demand for Devcoins, thus also increasing the market cap.
But Devtome bounties are paid for words, and they are not tied to market cap in any way. So we have a case of perverted incentive. Devtome leeches value off Devcoin without giving anything in return.
So I don't think Devcoin needs anything like hard fork... Just some accountability. Stop paying bounties for failed projects.
If anything I'd say that it makes sense to finance variety of smaller projects than to sink it into a huge one which might or might not be successful.
Another problem is lack of decentralization in management. Unthinkingbit manages both Devcoin itself and also he manages Devtome. The problem with it is that person cannot be critical to himself, so no matter whether he does great or shitty job maintaining Devtome, he will just follow his vision.
Instead imagine that Devtome was managed by other person, and Unthinkingbit's duty would be to allocate bounties according to project usefulness. Now hypothetical manager of Devtome will be interested in achieving usefulness, and he will likely try various things... If he doesn't do a great job, he can be replaced and other person has a chance to apply his ideas. Eventually control will get to a person who actually has some great idea to make project useful.