Also, forking in open source projects is completely normal, natural, and encouraged! It helps us to discover the best projects without having to reinvent the wheel.
The word "fork" has been quite much overloaded, I'm afraid. I even wrote my own article explaining the different usages of the word "fork".
Long-lasting forks are generally not encouraged (Github forks are to some extent encouraged - but in my vocabulary a software fork is something bigger than a github fork). In general best practice is to use the free software, praise the maintainers (who often is doing the maintainer work partly or fully on a volunteer basis), contribute back useful changesets and cooperate with the maintainers to get it incorporated. As a result the software package gets better, it gets more users, bigger network effect and everything is fine.
Software forks are useful when there are big disagreements with the maintainers, i.e. over the direction. Sometimes a "fork" is a way to get rid of bad maintainers who are blocking progress (X.Org is an example of a successful fork, with XFree86 being the incumbent now abandoned project).
What we're seeing with Bitcoin is that it's much more of a protocol than a software project. I think I've never heard the "fork"-word being used on protocols before - and I think it's totally weird to use the word "soft fork" and "hard fork" on protocol upgrades.
A failed protocol upgrade, or a big disagreement on the protocol upgrades will eventually lead to a long-lasting chain fork, which also means a coin fork. In the Bitcoin Cash case it was a planned, "clean" fork. Apparently both sides of the Bitcoin community grew more optimistic after the fork (putting more fiat into crypto), or there wouldn't be any "free money" with it.
In general protocol forks is a bad thing. One should stick to established protocols and standards as much as possible, and when it's needed to upgrade the standards or protocols, it's really best to get as many as possible on-board, agree on it, compromise if needed, do whatever is needed to keep one standard from becoming two. There are several flaws with the original Bitcoin protocol, and unfortunately no agreement on how to deal with them - and there seems to be no will at all for a compromise, it's "my way or the high way", the schism is incredibly toxic and very unfortunate.
What would be nice is to have some big crypto conference where all the most influencing actors are present, and where people would not be allowed to leave until one has agreed to support one and only one functional working crypto currency protocol ... a bit like the papal elections. Hm, wait ... I guess one tried that in Hong Kong and it was a failure as central actors defected the agreement as soon as they got out from the meeting room.
Thanks for your great reply! I think you're right, we should try to work together to create a stronger project instead of splitting up all the time. I think where I'm coming from is that I like to have lots of options with good competition in case the one idea turns out to be a bad one. I have almost lost faith in BTC at this point and I don't know if any of these forks are a good answer, but I'm glad to have the options now so that we can still have the amazing technology that BTC has brought us.
In general, competition is good ... but not always, and usually one does not want competition on standards - rather the opposite, it's very often nice if competitors follows the same standards as that makes it easier to replace a unit. As a small example, USB has become the norm for power delivery to almost all cellphones (at least here in the Europe - thanks to an EU initiative) - it's certainly not the best standard for this purpose, but it's a hell of a lot better than how things used to be - different plugs for every cell phone model almost.
Exceptions does apply though, old or bad standards can become a barrier for innovation - and proprietary de-facto standards can really skew the competition. If 95% of the population is comfortable with receiving and sending Microsoft Office attachments by email, it's very hard for anyone to compete against Microsoft Office (and very hard to be one of the 5% that doesn't like Microsoft Office).
And, we must not forget that cryptocurrency is in competition with fiat, centralized payment solutions and centralized banking systems - and cryptocurrency is the underdog. There are certain principles that most people in the crypto currency community agrees on - and even with the current bitcoin schism ... most people want the same - a strong, useful and decentralized Bitcoin, which side on happens to be on boils more down to whom one believes in more than what features with Bitcoin one thinks is more important.
If we could work together and pull at least partly in the same direction, the credit card duopoly would be history within some few years.
It does not necessary mean the same as scrapping all coins except for one - there may be other levels of cooperation, i.e. ensuring good standards for routing payments from one crypto currency to another (without using a centralized changing service like shapeshift).
Reading through your posts and becoming a bigger fan of yours. Hope you continue to contribute.
What are your thoughts on Industry Cryptocurrencies? For example OPEC or Agricultural/Soft Commodities companies band together to create their own crypto currency, one you can't mine (similar to Ripple), and insist on only being paid in that currency? I think the flexibility to create new currencies with blockchain technology will enable & encourage large corporations and industries to favor cooperation amongst one another other and undermine fiat currencies across the world.
I think it's very likely that we'll get new digital currencies created by industries or states - though, it's not obvious that a trustless, decentralized open blockchain will be favored over a centralized, proprietary, closed, trusted model (and in that case, there are no benefits with a blockchain anymore - it will more likely be some kind of shared database, controlled by one juridical entity).
I think it's utterly important to grow adoption of real crypto currencies as a means of payment, or else I'm quite concerned that we will be forced to use centralized solutions. Physical cash is getting obsoleted quite fast.
As a side note, I'm really concerned with the "digitalization" process here in Norway. On the positive side, one can take up mortages, buy houses, access personal health information, get information from the school, receive "secure" emails from governmental organizations, etc with few mouse clicks - but it's all centralized solutions with commercial entities both having de-facto monopol on the services offered, as well as sitting on all the private keys. I feel very uncomfortable with it, and those companies certainly have found a nice and secure way of siphoning tax money. I'm quite sure that we'd have decentralized solutions now if PGP had become popular among ordinary citizens during the 90s. Similarly, if we ever are to enjoy decentralized payment solutions we need to continue grow adoption and network effect. It's really very sad when the biggest and most well-known crypto currency is having a hard limit on the transaction volume (and hence adoption is efficiently stopped - there can only be more hodlers or indirect Bitcoin owners having their coins on the exchanges - there aren't space for more active users).
My line of thought is that we are already seeing data & analytics companies offering B2B solutions requirr you yo purchase "tokens" (not a blockchain tech) to pay for various services. My day job has me in this space regularly and it is becoming more and more common. I see it as a precursor of industrial trade credits and tokens backed by blockchain.
Thanks! I really appreciate that! I think that if cryptocurrencies survive, that it is very likely that we could see something like that. I have been thinking about how communities could set up their own currencies. I'll probably write a post about it in the next few weeks when I've thought about it some more.
Very well said. I don't think I have anything to add. You about covered it. The hard part now is deciding which standards we should use...