If there is no deadline then there is never an incentive to make the change over. Everyone is busy and it could take months to get everyone on-board 12.1 if you let them decide when it needs done.
But if there are a few large players that are having problems then I can see giving them a bit more time. But not setting a deadline is not a good practice. Procrastinator speaking.
May I respectfully ask if you are new to Dash? Enforcement usually begins roughly two weeks after the new version is officially released. In our entire history, there's never been a situation where the network just waited for weeks and months on folks to upgrade. Everybody is given a reasonable amount of time and then the trigger is pulled.
If you read Evan's 12.1 announcement, you'll note that February 12 is the *earliest* date that enforcement can begin:
(emphasis mine)
At some point AFTER February 12, as soon as it is SAFE to do so, enforcement will be turned on. As Minotaur pointed out above, this is a hard fork. As of a couple days ago, our biggest exchange (Poloniex) hadn't yet updated. It seems unwise to just kick them (and all their users) off the network in a fit of pique.
I'm not new to Dash. I was only expressing my thoughts out loud. And as I quoted above I'm really ok with Evan's announcement. That's just wasn't the information I remember reading and now upon reading his quote again, I have no issues.
But, I must admit I am confused now about what "enforcement" means or does. Some people are saying that as of yesterday only 12.1 masternodes are getting paid. I thought in order for that to happen, enforcement has to be activated.
Blocks mined with 12.0 are no longer accepted by the network because of bip65 activation so 12.0 masternodes are no longer payed.
Currently with no enforcement the result is that the miner can choose to pay a 12.1 masternode or keep all the reward to himself.
So since we have 100% pools on 12.1 that is why 12.1 masternodes are only getting paid? And being paid in random since enforcement is off?