As you say the Idea has been out there for over a year. Over on steem there has been a few hf, Hive we are only on the second hard fork. It is not that I disagree with the idea, it is just the wrong time, the wrong place. People have been discussing it for a long time, but wait until the last few days before the code freeze to bring it up as part of this hard fork which has primarily been a foundation stabilizing hard fork.
They have waited over a year, six more months is not going to make or break the bank, it will if done in this hard fork cause people to look and think twice about the motivation of why now and why was it not brought up at the early discussion of HF 25 if people feel it is so important to make a last minute change to HF 25.
I was there for the EIP hard fork and the last minute changes over on Steem and then the need to rush a fix out over the weekend with out proper thought or testing and causing lots of issues for more than four days. There is a time and a place, I just do not think HF25 last minute is the time or place.
It's a couple lines of code change and we'll have 1.5 months to check for bugs and make fixes before the hardfork hits. If we find any bugs during that time, I think the overwhelming odds are it will be in one of our other changes, not this one.