Prof, I haven't coded since Turbo Pascal days and am not likely to start seriously at this stage. I have a basic understanding of what you are trying to do; I have coins from the earlier days also. Two issues come to mind:
1) Considering the chaos that forking has wrought on the BTC community (especially BCH), I am leery of any basic changes in BTE coding since it's a straight clone of BTC. Someone is always going to take advantage of such changes to cash in for himself. Witness the BCH decable.
2) If you do post your proposed code changes to Github, how many users will it take to from a consensus? What happens to those who decline to adopt the changes? If they continue to use the original .08.1 software, will they be eventually locked out of the blockchain as the new chain adoption increases?
BTW, do you think I should continue mining? I would have commenced mining much earlier, but I could not get a connection to any peers. My 2 U3's seem to be picking up 2-3 blocks a day. Anyone object to this?
(Usually I edit carefully. "She" doesn't like me, and I went and had beer. Last time someone posted under those conditions, we got the term "HODL")
I wish I could see the future for answers.
I have a lot of coins, and it is strongly in my interest for them to have value. Today, I think that they don't.
I think the choice is between disruptive change, and a chain that was stagnant for almost 18 months and will be strip-mined again when profitable. That is a hard choice, but I don't see a different way to slice it.
On the code changes I am driven by only a few things. 1) I don't like special cases, 2) It takes many fewer hashes to repair the blockchain at about difficulty 1 than to finish the current and next interval to get the difficulty low. I figured it would take maybe $500 of electricity or hash rental to get the difficulty low again. I also want to give a block reward to the current miners as they mine the repair. This was a bit tricky to detail out.
My plan is to offer a fork and honestly list what I think the advantages are. Where-ever people put their hashes, that is where the future goes. I am deliberately indifferent as to which is chosen, keep in mind that I am hosting and facilitating a seed node on the legacy situation.
I will work strongly to what I think is a best solution, but it is always the choice of others to use it, or to stay with the strip-mined chain.
The blunt truth is that the current client is vulnerable to strip-mining. While there may be a way to remove that vulnerability and keep total compatibility for the foreseeable future, I don't know that solution after 4 years of thinking. So I am working on a minimal change version. I have a lot of ideas for "improvements" but as an experienced person I resist their temptation. I don't know what will happen during field test. That is a scary time for a programmer. All I can do is make a strong effort and see what happens.
I do think that all the alt-coins that rely on the original Satoshi client are vulnerable to strip mining. I think this is important technology to develop, whether the BTE group itself adopts it or not, and whether the core developers like it or not.
I do plan to pursue this as long as I think it is technically viable, in venues including and also other than the BTE group. I will make announcements 1st in the BTE group while they are still open to my changes.
As to whether you should keep mining. I can be accused of a conflict of interest if I give a crisp answer to that. I also don't really know. I could have a heart attack or be shot by a jealous boyfriend tomorrow, and you would wish you had kept mining. The minute I release my software I hope you will mine some on the repaired blockchain, but otherwise I think I need to remain silent.
Please raise all the objections that you can think of. I am working in a bubble, and I may have missed something important and obvious.