I guess I'm still not following why Core decided to do this. Why open up this battle right now, was anyone actually asking for this? This just seems like a tactical error on Core's part, or theres something that they are trying to distract us from like covenants or something.

I don't see the upside for them, and it seems like the end result is more implementations of Bitcoin will get support - which I'm okay with, because if the others get some traction I would think they would all need to be somewhat in agreement on the big things or risk a fork. MAD for changes to Bitcoin.