I'm sorry if I gave that impression, but just because I didn't respond to those four particular words doesn't mean I didn't read your post at all. I have to be

I'm sorry if I gave that impression, but just because I didn't respond to those four particular words doesn't mean I didn't read your post at all. I have to believe "These variants can fill various niches, such as security, speed, or ease of use" and "many will succeed" were also there for a reason, and those are what I was responding to. My point is that for most projects, you don't end up with a bunch of viable forks. It's rare even to end up with two viable public forks, much less several. It's not much like sexual reproduction because sexual reproduction requires there to be multiple breeding entities.