Y'all probably want this:
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/491
However, I don't think you can fix all the problems that a fixed transaction fee cause; the real problem is that basic economics says that you need to let the price of a scare resource change, ideally in a market, to match the underlying real costs.
(bitcoin's fee structure isn't right either, and fixing it to create a market between miners and clients is high on the TODO list)
CH/RS should really learn from Gavin instead of criticizing him for being a hacker supporter. When ArtForz approached CH/RS with the vulnerabilities in SolidCoin, he was basically told to get lost. So ArtForz got upset and did a fairly nice attack on the SolidCoin chain to prove his point. He sent these large transactions one at a time, which slowed down the network and actually showed another vulnerability in both Bitcoin and SolidCoin. He could have done a lot worse if he released a ton of these huge transactions at the same time. If he did that, it would have likely killed all the clients.
I assume ArtForz approached Gavin with this out of space vulnerability in Bitcoin. And instead of telling ArtForz to get lost, Gavin worked with him to fix the vulnerability. That's how a mature and competent lead on a big open source project is supposed to act. If someone is nice enough to come to you to tell you about a potential vulnerability, you work with him to fix it instead of pissing him off so that he would actually try to attack your chain with that vulnerability.