People can draw whatever conclusions they want from the chat log that is shared here.

I would like to state a few things though - which I don't think these logs (with limited context) do a proper job framing. (None of what I have said here or elsewhere, in public or private, is in contradiction to these statements.)

• I have never through this whole thing had any intention of applying a hardfork change to my witness node to fork the main chain. I have entertained and discussed the idea, which included giving it serious consideration, but I have not gone so far as to support it, or make any statement indication that I would move forward with it. Full disclosure - entertaining the idea does mean that I was open to the possibility of moving forward with it. For clarity though, there is a big gap (in my mind) between giving it serious consideration and actually doing it. I was quite a long ways off from doing it.
• timcliff set the channel purpose: Discuss the details pertaining to Steemit's stake that is relevant to the conversation (which accounts, how much STEEM, power down rates, etc.) My intention with the formation of this channel was to know how much stake Steemit had, and in which accounts, and whether they had reacted to what we were doing yet. I can see how it looks like an intention to proceed with an attack on those accounts, but it (as with a lot of the conversations) was intended for information gathering. This is still information that I am interested in having, and it has nothing to do with anything related to forking.
• The reason we are talking about "negotiations" in the channel is because Ned reached out to us and asked to "come to the table" to discuss.

I have documented my views on this whole property rights thing, in a reply to someone else's comment in another post. I'll put it here, so my views are clear:

I would ask you to look at the fact that I haven't forked (even though I didn't "get what I wanted" as some would say) as an indication that I am not going to toy around with these things. I do though still reserve the right as a witness to adopt any hardfork that I truly believe is in the best interest of the stakeholders and platform, and in absolutely extreme situations - that might include freezing somebody's account.

Here is one example to think about - if an exchange has more than enough STEEM on it to be able to single-handy take over all of the top 20 witness votes and they get hacked by a malicious actor who wants to destroy Steem - I would seriously consider it in that case. You can start to get less black and white - let's say that Steemit, Inc. somehow got "taken over" (not hacked) by a group of people that wanted to adopt a hardfork that would somehow screw over all the other stakeholders. Again, I might seriously consider it in that case too. Where does the line get drawn?

Honestly, it is a really difficult question. And a serious one too. Part of me would love to just take a simple "I will never do it" stance, but honestly - I feel that it would be irresponsible to do so. I take my job very seriously, and I reserve the right to use whatever tools exist in my tool-belt if I deem them necessary to do what is best for the Steem stakeholders.

The point is, it is not always black and white, and I am not going to make an on-chain commitment to never consider using it as a tool. I am also not going to cloud up a post which had a specific intention (to ensure Steemit that their funds were safe if they didn't power down) with a long drawn out explanation of when I found it appropriate to use this type of hardfork as a tool.