[nicksdjohnson]

Every single Ethereum dev I know - and pretty nearly everyone else in the community - owns far more ETH than they do DAO, if they own any DAO at all. So this 'explanation', which I see over and over again, just doesn't scan: The financially rational thing for anyone in that position to do is to maximise the value of the ether they have, not to try and rescue a proportionally small amount held in DAO tokens.

Disclaimer: I recently joined the Ethereum-go team. I have 30 ether worth of DAO tokens (and about 500 ether not invested in anything).

[npongratz]

Effectively breaking the immutability of a blockchain's history might be financially rational[0], but it appears unprincipled to do so after leadership spent a couple years extolling the virtues of "code is law" and "code is contract."

I'd like to learn what principles are now now guiding the development team, since "code is contract" has apparently been abandoned. After this episode, it appears (from the outside) that it will be more financially beneficial for any project using the Ethereum blockchain to aggressively pursue investment from core developers and 15% of the token holders than to ensure the correctness of their code. In my view, this fatally undermines the value proposition of both said hypothetical project and Ethereum itself.

For many people, "perception is reality." I know that media often unfairly frames their reporting, and in this case everything I've seen reported has been the seemingly arbitrary and seemingly self-serving nature of Ethereum development. I would be happy to be shown what I've read is wrong and that the philosophical foundation of Ethereum development is sound, consistent, and impartial.

[0] Certainly for a subset and the short term, arguable for all and the long term.