So whats the consensus here?
Are we agreeing to differ?
Look, I think we all want bitcoin to succeed, or we would all be on pornhub right now.
bitcoinXT is a move towards trying to address some ( but not all) of the immediate shortcomings in the protocol. Its far from perfect - I now accept that the code
can do a live connect to tor to get an exit node list, something I am absolutely against - but in principle I feel that it is a valid release within the spirit of open source and bitcoin.
I dont believe that it will be a magic potion that will suddenly allow us to give Visanet a run for its money. But it does get the ball rolling and get the debate into a wider arena.
Okay, this makes some people very unhappy, but you will never keep everyone happy in a project of this nature. It comes down to a straight choice - given all the factors you either decide to run with XT as a vote towards its core value of bigger blocks, or you stay with core, where you say that you dont want to move on without full consensus.
Bitcoin is more than capable of absorbing forks of this nature (whether you class them as software forks, hardware forks or schisms) - whats more important is that it doesn't decent into the naked hatred that has been evident here lately. There is no need. I myself am guilty of contributing to that. But I'm now drawing a line under that, I dont want to personalise this any further as a battle between guys on one team versus guys on another. They have all worked together in the past, and I am sure they will be able to do so in the future - irrespective of the outcome of the XT plebiscite.
I dont know, maybe a last minute patch to core that offers a compromise between the two implementations might be more appropriate. But I can't judge whether there is an appetite for this or not.