Did Ethcore Bungle the Byzantium Hardfork?

I have been running ETH nodes since before the DAO hardfork and Ethcore's handling of this most recent hardfork is very suspect. A vulnerability was found in the Byzantium release of Metropolis and Ethcore rushed out a new Geth client and Mist release less than 48 hours before the hardfork.

Ethereum has a history of releasing clients and wallets without properly informing its userbase of the update. Ethcore should have postponed the hardfork to make sure they had all users on board with the fix for the vulnerability. I am on my second sync attempt now for my node, the first attempt left my node lagging over 100K blocks. I am wondering how many nodes out there are not updated for the fix. I think it was irresponsible to move on with the hardfork with a fix coming so close to the hardfork block.

I know Mist and Geth let users know that an update is available, but that does not inform users about the vulnerability and I wonder how many skipped it. Critical updates like this need to be handled in a more responsible manner. I am hoping my second sync attempt, launching Geth from the Eth wallet works better than Geth alone. If anybody else takes issue with the handling of this hardfork I would like to hear from you. Let me know what issues you are experiencing in the wake of this hardfork.

My two cents