that's fine, but just don't f*ck it up. 
Note that Gavin has said in the past that he wants to see multiple implementations of the protocol, yet somehow the other core developers managed to fend off every attempt by other teams to do exactly this.Finally somebody showed up that was good enough that they couldn't stop by stonewalling them, so now they just ignore them and hope everybody else does too.
i'm very much for btcd and Bitcoinj. the resiliency gained from those implementations strengthens Bitcoin.
i also think that projects like Open Transactions will be good for the system. at least they don't blow wind. can't wait for them to get something up and running.
maybe you like Gavin more than you think...