you are right it should have been done when it was first coded into HF 14... hindsight is always 20/20. The witnesses gave Ned the benefit of the doubt that he'd keep his promises and the didn't trigger the code.

You're wrong about it being their self-interest or that it has violated the trust of the chain.

The group of witnesses and stakeholders who came together to make the decision was pretty much unprecedented on this chain. They are continuing to work together to come up with solutions to mitigate the issue in the future so this doesn't happen again. Those solutions will likely require a hardfork not a softfork. This was an issue I very clearly asked questions about at the Community Discussion held in The Ramble last Tuesday.

IT was a two hour discussion about the softfork.

March 6th and it's earlier meeting on March 4th will be steps towards building some bridges and understanding. No solutions are promised that day including lifting the SF. It's going to be a process not a one and done event.