Shameful? More like hilarious! It was a brilliant marketing exercise, using XT's social engineering attacks to bring in suckers to help mine some blocks.
Nothing hilarious in making a move like this. Supporting a specific client and/or BIP should be something done, not simply thought out. Slush apparently only thought out and didn't really act. He didn't support his beliefs with an act. He should have simply change the client on the big block support port.
Decisions like these in Bitcoin should be weighed in. It's the future of the whole system and economy we're deciding.
You expected an established pool to just suddenly drop untested shite like XT into their production environment,
Yes, I did. What makes the spoofed client more reliable than the client that supports big blocks? What makes the client that supports big blocks less reliable than the spoofed client or the reference client? I'm talking stability-wise only, of course.
just to appease some cranky insignificant Gavinista malcontent splinter group?
This has nothing to do with a single entity in my opinion. So I seriously don't know what to say about the "cranky insignificant Gavinista malcontent splinter group"
But hey, at least your not among the dead-enders bitterly clinging to the idea that Slush wasn't spoofing, Because Intentions And Stuff.
The way to hell is paved with good intentions.