this thing has no support and will never gain any support.
there are 2 groups of people, those who understand things and those who don't.
the first group won't go for it because they understand. and the second group won't because they will go with what core devs (who they have been trusting for years gives them not what a known scammer called CW with his nChain pretends to give them)
^ this.
Bitcoin ABC is not even a hard fork of bitcoin in my opinion, it's more of its own cryptocurrency.
Plus, there is going to be a solo mine for several days(can't remember the exact figure from the top of my head). So it's definitely not going to be supported widely apart from Bitmain itself, in my opinion.
It's not surprising that Coinbase has made this decision. There is probably going to be a number of very very small forks as well after 1st August which everyone will probably ignore.
They are going to mine it for 48 hours (if I'm not mistaken)
Regarding whether Bitcoin ABC is a hard fork or a separate cryptocurrency, these two options aren't mutually exclusive. In other words, it is a hard fork (since the coin is based on the copy of the Bitcoin blockchain) which could potentially lead to a separate (from Bitcoin) cryptocurrency. Moreover, if it gets enough traction and popularity, the process of forking could even be called a Bitcoin split retrospectively, especially if a devastating dumping war follows soon thereafter (since that would effectively mean a split)