The real satoshi told you what happens to
minority forks ...
A second version would be a massive development and maintenance hassle for me. It's hard enough maintaining backward compatibility while upgrading the network without a second version locking things in. If the second version screwed up, the user experience would reflect badly on both, although it would at least reinforce to users the importance of staying with the official version. If someone was getting ready to fork a second version, I would have to air a lot of disclaimers about the risks of using a minority version. This is a design where the majority version wins if there's any disagreement, and that can be pretty ugly for the minority version and I'd rather not go into it, and I don't have to as long as there's only one version.
I know, most developers don't like their software forked, but I have real technical reasons in this case.
...snip...
were there not two versions of the client early one? the official of course but also a second one written from scratch independently updated to be protocol level compatible by someone else. satoshi could ignore it so no extra work for him. as a second client can be useful in case a bug takes out one version. but core has been amazingly robust though.
but maybe im thinking ethereum.. i know that one had a couple.
The real satoshi is talking about the possibility of future chain forks here (i.e. BCH and BSV etc.,)
BSV and BCH are the minority forks, clearly also defined by origin, history, market capitalization and the user base.
Unique chain forks i.e. (altcoins from a unique genesis block and with a unique timechain) are not the type of forks satoshi was referring to here.
BTC is both the original and the majority chain i.e. BTC is Bitcoin.
BCH and BSV are effectively financial derivative (copies) of BTC up to and including a certain block height ...
-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derivative_(finance)-
https://github.com/bitcoin-sv/bitcoin-sv/blob/master/LICENSE"... 2 - The Software, and any software that is derived from the Software or parts thereof,
can only be used on the Bitcoin SV blockchains. The Bitcoin SV blockchains are defined,
for purposes of this license, as the Bitcoin blockchain containing block height #556767
with the hash "000000000000000001d956714215d96ffc00e0afda4cd0a96c96f8d802b1662b" and
the test blockchains that are supported by the un-modified Software. ..."
Again, the real satoshi clearly described why chain forks are bad and exactly how they will end ...
ugly.