On Dec 26, 2015 5:45 PM, "Pieter Wuille via bitcoin-dev" <
bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
> My opinion is that the role of Bitcoin Core maintainers is judging
whether consensus for a hard fork exists, and is technically necessary and
safe. We don't need a hashpower vote to decide whether a hardfork is
accepted or not, we need to be sure that full noded will accept it, and
adopt it in time. A hashpower vote can still be used to be sure that miners
_also_ agree.

To clarify, that's the role of Bitcoin Core maintainers because they decide
what goes into Bitcoin Core, not because they decide the consensus rules of
Bitcoin. Other full node implementations (say, libbitcoin) will have to
decide on their own and Bitcoin Core mainteiners don't have any authority
over libbitcoin (or other alternative implementations). Nobody has such
authority (not even the creator of the system if he was still maintaining
Bitcoin Core).