Alt-coins that aren't using Bitcoin's codebase are the only ones that stand a chance to even remotely stand alongside/compete with Bitcoin."
I certantly wouldn't agree there. For people that are actually willing to write code an inability to just copy and paste is not much of a barrier.
How about, you know, actually offering a distinct value that justifies having a whole other currency (e.g. friecoin)?
Edit: I removed some spam plugging Bytecoin based (e.g. bytecoin, monero, fantom, etc.) coins from this thread which also spammed other threads but to the extent that there was a genuine misunderstanding, and not just a desire to spam I figure I should comment... the bytecoin ring signature is pretty straight forward to add to Bitcoin though it implies a pretty considerable scalability tradeoff. Andytoshi and I have come up with some pretty substantial cryptographic improvements, e.g.
https://download.wpsoftware.net/bitcoin/wizardry/brs-arbitrary-output-sizes.txt