Calling it a code change does not change the fact that it was a fork, its a hard fork. Also, no one is obligated to run old code, if witnesses choose to run a new fork no one can force them to continue running old code. Ticker symbols are technically no-man's land, since they don't belong to the blockchain or a company and are ultimately up to the exchanges to agree to use or not.
A blockchain is not a corporation, no one owns the blockchain and no company has intellectual property rights over it if it is an opensource blockchain. Blocktrades pointed it out, the situation is the same in both cases, you cannot coerce anyone to run a copy of a blockchain. You have every right to run the old code yourself, but you cannot force the consensus witnesses to run the old version.
I'm not disagreeing with your stance in favor of Steem over Hive. What all this so far has told me is that public blockchains using DPoS are not effective for storing value. And that the witness system doesn't work. For a blockchain's assets to be a good SoV that blockchain needs to be maximally decentralized.
I'm not condoning Justin or the Hive founders, I think both parties acted shamefully. My conclusion is that what we are seeing is that delegated proof of stake is a failed consensus system for a blockchain intended for storing value precisely because you cannot force the witnesses to run the code you want.