It seems like a question of philosophy and degrees to me. Scrypt is GPU and ASIC resistant. Should it be ASIC hostile?

Some of the things talked about when litecoin was just a glimmer in coblee's eye were low initial cost mining, mining on consumer hardware, spreading coins out with a wide mining base, discouraging centralization, being open and transparent.

ASICs worry me. It's a fact that a scrypt ASIC would have to be much more expensive and more complex than their bitcoin mining counterparts. That could work against the majority of miners in the end. All PoW mining eventually comes down to hash/watt. If scrypt ASICs are going to be more expensive AND more efficient at hashing then that could stratify the mining economy. Potentially limiting mining to those with tens of thousands of dollars to spend in a pessimistic scenario. Going further, what if the ASIC producers refuse to sell? Self mining while protecting their ASIC designs in the courts.

There's obvious trust issues there. The real innovation of crypto coins is their trust-less nature. What gmaxwell said about litecoin differentiating itself resonates with me.

What would be the downside of small periodic changes to the PoW? It's pretty much limited to a software problem. I don't think any scrypt ASICs have started mining yet. That would have shown up on the network hashrate. So there's no miners to hurt at this time. Miners and users should have to do more frequent software updates. There would have to be steady software development.

The miner side of that could be a problem with GPU support for cgminer being dropped. On the other hand, a few months ago there was a very successful funding drive for litecoin development. Some will be unaware of changes or refuse to update their software. On the other hand, encouraging users to stay on the latest versions could give huge security and efficiency benefits to the net.

Changing the PoW also sends a message. Litecoin is ASIC HOSTILE, forget about it, don't even try. Without a doubt there will be other coins that would not take this path and scrypt ASICs would be produced eventually (maybe not without a doubt, I think it's likely though). It also says that litecoin is a work in progress, subject to change. I can see that in both a positive and a negative light. Shouldn't we keep trying to make the more perfect coin? It's not a tyranny, any software developers are free to make their bids and users are free to vote.

I'm surprised to say that I'm in favor of the proposal. I'm not fully versed in all aspects of this choice but it seems to be the lesser of two evils and would be in line with litecoin's principals and core philosophy, as I understand them.

EDIT: I don't think this is any kind of problem in the near future. I'm trying to imagine the network YEARS from now. I'd rather not see a couple of data center type mining farms being the only ones hashing for litecoin.