The beautiful thing about open source is you can fork if you don't like the direction a project is going. You then benefit from all the prior work done, even by the devs you no longer see eye-to-eye with. This is a wonderful asymmetry that gives dissenters a big advantage. So don't be surprised when the incumbent dev team cries about it. Of course they'll say things like "why don't you start from scratch?" and of course they'll shit on the fork and do everything in their power to hinder it. Because the fork has a huge advantage. It can even merge future work the original devs do if it aligns with the fork's ethos. Any open source dev knows this and this is the reason they start throwing shade almost immediately, their work might help the competition. But anyone who truly understands open source knows this is a good thing and protects against a project being taken over by a few bad actors.

I'd love to see a core fork that is completely developed and maintained by nyms. Satoshi showed us the way, and it's a shame we didn't follow his example and make pseudonymity the defining characteristic of Bitcoin development culture. Any dev who's legal identity is known can be assumed to be compromised at this point. https://fountain.fm/episode/O2I3sTTm9W3TheF5Y3yl View quoted note →

Be wary when someone cries about "purity tests". They're trying to get you to compromise your principles. Introspection and reevaluating your principles is good but it should be self initiated, not in response to goading from someone who benefits from your acquiescence. For them, getting you to compromise the first time is the hardest. It only gets easier from there.