Thats the biggest problem that we are seeing here. We have a ton of non-developers who have no clue how open-source projects work. When the main version stops updating/or changing thing's others don't like, different versions appear. And ussualy the one's who are most reluctant to change, get eaten up by their competition.
SolidCoin is just BitCoin hacked by someone with WAY less talent than the bitcoin developers. It's hacked to do things differently, not better, just differently. The SolidCoin website is a tissue of lies insulting the very project that SolidCoin is a fork of. Anyone could fork something successful, hack a few constants, change a few images, and get a new project. That doesn't mean that project deserves to be taken seriously.
Currency is a natural monopoly, It's just governments and their central banks who force one currency per country.