What does it mean to me?

[cricchi]

I do not understand what the fork means so for someone who is looking into getting into Bitcoin should I not because of the recent news?

if this fork does happen and people convert to the new system what does that mean for bitcoin? it dies? if we go with the new system does that mean its a totally different coin completely? or does it mean just chaging the client people use?

people are comparing core vs  XT so are they comparing the clients here?

[itsAj]

It means your going have to side with one particular party. About the way the progress and development of Bitcoin goes, so you either support leave bitcoin alone or you support change bitcoin blocksize. There is nothing different to this than just a creation of an altcoin but it does mean that you have to support one or the other. I don't really see any reason for leverage position Gavin is making as you can tell already within 24 hours even talk of a fork from the lead developer undermines the entire system. XT does have particular advancements but it is not a huge leap to where we are at now.

Currently the people who are supposed to maintain the source code adhering to Satoshi Nakamotos original theoretics are saying do not do this because we don't know what will happen and causing a hardfork when there is no need is silly. The core developers are supposed to maintain and develop in co-ordination with Satoshis theoretics.

Or you can side with Gavin who is a great cryptographer and developer. It is a complete unknown at this point even the technology changes he is making is purely theoretics.

If Bitcoin is split into two sects lets say, BTC and BTC-XT then the market will divide and it will be hard to understand how to integrate, what should be integrated why it should and why is it needed.

Again these are theoretical ramblings from a long time Bitcoiner, but I do know short term this is damaging the market because of uncertainty of what path the development takes.