All predictions indicate that we won't get it because certain Core developers do not have the trust of the community anymore.
Source?
TBH I think you are believing /r/btc a bit too much
/r/btc does not represent the community. While a majority of /r/btc users are just people who want TXs to be a little bit cheaper and therefor bigger blocks (which is fair!) The vocal actors on that subreddit are very obviously malicious. They constantly spread propaganda full of lies just to push the threat that is "emergent consensus". Any critical rebate, even with proper arguments and technical proof, is downvoted to oblivion. /r/bitcoin is not really good, but /r/btc is just terrible. (Overall I never liked reddit.)
But IMO go outside reddit and look a bit to businesses, known bitcoin users, full nodes, etc. The majority (still) easily support Bitcoin Core as it is obviously the most competent team.
Our argument is, that Core did a lot of mistakes and the public perception has suffered.
I can agree. But the problem is that people expect Bitcoin Core to act as 1 clear entity with a clear message. But Bitcoin Core is an open-source project with a lot of different indivuduals. For example, LukeJr tends to have a bit of an extreme opinion (and obviously vocal /r/btc love to quote him.) But he does not represent Bitcoin Core, he is just 1 of the developers.
Many would love to see Core officially pledging to a blocksize HF in the future. But the thing is, only
individual developers/contributors can really do that. And IMO most of them have said to support a blocksize HF increase somewhere in the future. The idea is basically to activate Segwit, collect data (like are full nodes affected by the increasing blocksize that Segwit brings?) and have a definite dynamic blocksize HF based on that. Core isn't best in PR, but their path still seems most scientific/best to me.
I personally believe that after activating Segwit, we will continue the blocksize increase HF discussion and the best solution will come forward. There is no real point in trying to do it before Segwit... if we cannot even get consensus behind an obvious improvement on bitcoin (fixing malleability, opening the options for second layers and having an initial bump) as a SF, how will we ever get consensus behind a HF? I don't think the "emergent consensus" where effectively miners have full power over blocksize and users risk being on the wrong fork constantly, is even a real option. But there has been some BIPs (from Jeff and even from Luke if we change the start parameters), that could be adjusted and potentially still get consensus.
We are supporting SegWit. We prefer it as Hard Fork
....
Two different Bitcoins is the last thing we want.
Why would you prefer Segwit as HF while you don't want 2 different bitcoins?
Softfork is obviously less risky. Additionally Segwit as SF can be activated within just some weeks, HF will take many extra months of planning. Segwit just need some miners to activate it now.
Businesses and
users seem ready.
but even as SF it would probably be better than the status quo.
....
7) We never said, we support BU. Two different Bitcoins is the last thing we want.
I understand and glad to hear it again