current core users, for better or worse, could take the rip van winkle test and go to sleep for 5 years, probably let their node just run...

and when they woke up it would still be consensus valid. because 100kb op_returns for better or worse are consensus valid. So nothing has fundamentally changed.

(not saying you shouldn't update node software... you should but consensus hasn't changed that's my point)

Knots users, and i'm not judging them in any way, are being put in a position to store whatever on their nodes, depend on the goodness of random people, or fork and change the rules so they know they won't object to what's getting into blocks.

Those are their current options.