Agree with your statement about the lack of incentive to secure the network. This of course assumes that the interests of the pools are the same as the miner. Generally it is.
I continue to favor a 1 coin per block mining rate after we hit the limit. Others may disagree, however let's see what indeed happens. The code fix is indeed trivial, however what is not trivial is if a pool like GHash.IO removes IXC from its merged mining... that is not a trivial event to fix... that will absolutely kill the coin.
If you intend to keep updating the code, which hopefully you do, you have to get the pools to accept new versions. Once incentive stops, no reason for pools to even bother with any updates. If only GHASH.IO left, well, there goes anyone in this community ever looking to IXC ever again. I cannot see a single logical rational argument for ending inflation and neither does Milton Friedman.
I am starting to see this as a 5 year project before IXC gains any traction, if ever, even with 1 coin per block lol.
You are correct in that the new version of IXC needs to get into GHash.IO (and the other pools). That absolutely is priority.
Can someone take up the technical task to ensure that GHash.IO is consistently updated with the IXC code?
I certainly don't have the time for that. I really don't own a lot of IXC, so I really don't have any real incentive to do a lot of maintenance work for IXC.