The one thing I can't tell about io.js or node-forward is whether any attempts will be made for PRs against Node 'proper' in an effort to eventually reunify and

The one thing I can't tell about io.js or node-forward is whether any attempts will be made for PRs against Node 'proper' in an effort to eventually reunify and improve the entire existing ecosystem. The vast majority of Node end-users aren't missing major functionality from the existing API, so being able to share improvements with mainline Node will be the only way to show that there actually are better features coming out of the forks. Otherwise features developed in the forks will have much narrower adoption and will likely seem unstable/untested.