I don't really understand smart contracts yet, but wouldn't it have been possible to implement the DAO in a way such that forks/cancellations could be "voted" o

I don't really understand smart contracts yet, but wouldn't it have been possible to implement the DAO in a way such that forks/cancellations could be "voted" on by the network somehow, versus requiring whatever this is going to require? Code fork? It least the fork would have been "decentralized" then... this does not bode well at all.