Who do you think initiated the "negotiation"? If you are thinking it was the developer of the embryonic fork code or anyone talking about the possibility of such a fork happening, you would be wrong.

In point of fact, at the time the initiation of the fork discussion by Johan, Ned had been MIA for weeks. I doubt that anyone had any expectation of talking to him at all. Any discussion or negotiation took place only after Ned contacted some of the people discussing the possibility of a fork (one might venture to invoke "Alice" here, had the situations not be so completely and utterly different, at least from that point of a requested discussion forward) and asked them what sort of action he might be able to take to discourage it.

When someone asks you "What can I do to discourage you from doing X?", X being a thing which is not an act of violence or a crime of any kind, answering the question is not a threat, nor extortion, nor piracy, not heist, nor theft.