Yes, and it happens all the time in other projects. There's always "so-and-so's fork that implements feature X and changes Y", and it's awesome that that's a po

Yes, and it happens all the time in other projects. There's always "so-and-so's fork that implements feature X and changes Y", and it's awesome that that's a possibility since it means no project is held hostage by its maintainer, and that differences in priorities don't mean the code can't be useful for a range of use cases.