Perhaps this is because my coffee rush ended and I'm currently in the post-coffee slump, but I don't follow what you're saying. Are you saying this event will/has not change(d) the way many looked at node as well as perhaps its growth axis? Also, when you mention these changes, I'm honestly not familiar with the stats - did they improve or decline? I also don't follow your second paragraph, but that could be simply because I missed what you were saying in your first
The first fork drove some away because some felt the ecosystem was fragmenting but many came back after they merged back or understood io.js advantages. Some new developers who might have choosen the language never came back. The growth curve was altered because of those events.
This new split will not drive people away or stop the adoption in the same way. It's may cause some to put there changes in this new fork but this new fork will push changes to the node.js repo and this new fork will keep pulling changes from node.js.
