We want to be able to fork in the case of a divergence of interest between the community and Steemit Inc.
You can do that today. Stake decides witnesses and witnesses define the chain, not Steemit.
We also want to be able to retain the same general rules in the case where Steemit Inc pushes through a fork which the community does not agree with.
Everyone loses bigtime if we were to do that, us included, so you can be confident that we won't.
It is disallowed by the clause. If we fork by changing the rules in any way not allowed by Steemit Inc we are in violation of this clause.
This is completely valid, but would us decentralizing the stake not accomplish the exact same thing?
This is our goal.
Until then, having a big red nuclear scram button that can be used in (technical/engineering—not ideological/policy) emergencies while we're in beta is simply high-availablity engineering prudence. There's even a feature in the blockchain right now that allows anyone to permanently cancel all of their stake's voting power, for this exact reason.
We're on the same page as you. :)
@demotruk
PS: I can't wait until we have deeper comment nesting in HF17! This 6 post deep thing is for the birds.
There is no confusion over repo forks and blockchain forks. We are on the same page re: blockchain forks.
What if we want to change to a ruleset not agreed by the current witnesses (since those witnesses are elected primarily by Steemit Inc as it stands)? That is the kind of fork we should be allowed to perform. We might want to do this for example when Steemit Inc changes the rules to something unpopular (perhaps a rule which ensures Steemit Inc always has a ruling stake), by stacking the witness list in their favour.
Forking away from this would be the communities defense against Steemit Inc becoming too powerful.
@sneak
Eventually it might not be a concern, when Steemit Inc has distributed its power as such.
However, it may still be. Your interpretation that the clause would not prevent hard forks opposed by Steemit Inc may not be how the courts or the future owners of Steemit see it. And there could still be some significant time between now and then. It only took 5 years for the Bitcoin community to completely turn on its head, for example, with various parties vying for power (some indeed threatening legal force). I am concerned about these scenarios because I have seen them happen before.
I can see your described scenario as a harmful one, but I'm not sure that legal avenues are the best defense. A contentious minority fork of Bitcoin could similarly be called 'Bitcoin' by various parties, leading to confusion. Yet I would still prefer that the market and not legal force ultimately determines what is fair to call "Bitcoin" and "Steem".
@sneak
I think the confusion is that the term "fork" refers to both the repo and the blockchain.
Forks of the repo are permitted, derived works are permitted, but those works have to be used on this blockchain as defined by the witnesses (not Steemit). Those derived works, on this blockchain, would be useless without witness support, so it is basically just a requirement that your changes work within the existing stake-based DPoS framework we already all agree on.