I am actually surprised that not more people have optimized the miner and created GPU versions. It's a basic algorithm, much easier than CryptoNite. It's not actually hard to port to GPU.
I'm willing to provide a GPU version in ccMiner if we can get some stratum support in the pools.
But still that will exclude all the AMD folks, as ccMiner is CUDA only. Then all the AMD fanboys will cry "foul play!"
It doesn't look like anybody is going to abandon this coin. The developer is very active, kind people like dga are contributing to simpleminer and a GUI wallet is in the works. The price has tripled already and investors seem to like the coin.
Your post make me worry even more

. If porting a GPU miner is not hard as you said, there is high chance that you're not the only one who have optimized miner for this coin. There are many skilled programmers in this board, you know.