I ask myself is there some way we can have our cake and eat it too? Can we go on trying out new features while still oferring stability to those willing to wait for it?

Honestly, it seems like this is precisely that.

There's a general feeling in the community that the future of the Scala language and toolset is closely tied to the business goals of one specific company, at the expense of other members of the community. As long as the fork stays close to the existing mainline -- and it seems they intend to -- this seems like it should work out well for both sides: the community gets to fix some longstanding pain points with their tools, and Typesafe gets a fertile source of pre-battletested improvements to roll in to their slower-moving distribution.