...One side with an alternative client and the other with their sidechain.
not true.
one side is an altcoin the other is bitcoin.
period.
I think you misunderstood what he wrote. The other admins have their own sidechant, the lightning network. And that network would have an advantage when bitcoin would turn out to be expensive and slow or not unreliable. Because transactions would swith there. Which, by the way, is their argument. We need to take out transactions from bitcoin and leave bitcoin as a high value transaction system.
Surely not what most bitcoiners would want. Or the vision satoshi had with bitcoins.
So yes, both sides have their own altcoin in mind.
Meh, as long as bitcoin does not get highjacked. They can build whatever they want on top of it.
But high value transaction system? Sign me up already.
Though the problem starts when they promote 1 MB blocks which will effectively make bitcoin worse for users. Higher fees, unreliability about transactions going through and so on.
You should not create a sidechain, claim that transactions should move from bitcoin to sidechains and to make that possible make bitcoins less useful.
That simply is not ok.
And what about hijacked? Practically no one using xt is a fan of hearn. It is only a vote for bigger blocks. No one wants the other stupid things he wants.
Bigger blocks shall arrive in due time, if/when we have properly assessed all the little details that make this whole system hold together, taking into account
real data and undertake proper tests to be sure not to break the fragile equilibrium that Bitcoin's unique
consensus implies.
This is why status quo prevailed until gavin and heanr spread monsterfud amongst the noobs over at reddit.
This is why it shall prevail until a consensus is reached by all parties (not only the big miners, payment or wallets big corps).
This is why this process will take time, because blocks are not even half full on average, fees are laughable, mass adoption is still just some egocentric speculation, and socio-economics incentives are more investment driven (bitcoin's main sales pitch until now) than some cheesy visa/paypal competition (which is, btw, technically impossible on a single POW layer - ~26 GB/blocks to compete - because obviously decentralization hence, security of the network comes first).
edit: and to answer the OP, gavin was so urgent because his USG puppetmasters wanted to implement some "governance" on top of bitcoin (besides rushing a fork that could have literally killed bitcoin and its fragile equilibrium).
and he even admitted it somehow that he and heanr would be the "benevolent dictator".. not gonna happen tho.