To anyone following this Bitcoin drama, what's the deal with this nlocktime stuff?

https://np.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/4laahz/another_blockstream_core_developers_conflict_of/ https://np.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/4lapi6/does_a_hardfork_destroy_time_locked_bitcoins/d3lx5oy

Is it true that simply raising the Bitcoin block size could be backwards incompatible with respect to bitcoins which are locked in a time capsule? That sounds incredibly scary. At one point years ago I had thought about locking up some of my bitcoins to prevent myself from selling them. I've also thought about doing the same with some ethers.

It's frightening to think that coins could be locked and then a change in the protocol could make them inaccessible. What if the people with locked coins hadn't turned out to be Core developers? What if the people who had locked their coins had just been average Joes and then the Core developers decided to make this random change that happened to destroy Joe's coins? He wouldn't have been able to get his voice heard loud enough to stop them.

I sincerely hope this will never even become a possibility with Ethereum. All past contracts should always be honored, and if it turns out a fork breaks a previous contract there should always be a way to fork again to recover the unintentionally lost coins (for a user who has every right to recover those coins).

I just don't understand how this can be a real problem with Bitcoin. Shouldn't they at the very least be able to put in the code that addresses which received coins before date X behave this way and transactions after that date behave another way, to prevent addresses in the X category from losing coins due to a fork?