I'm wondering what would happen to our current (call it legacy) bitcoin market value if a well organized and transparent startup essentially forked bitcoin with a few custom modifications?  For sake of argument, let's assume they left everything the same except that the final number of coins is limited to 10M instead of 21M.  (being a non-developer, please correct me if this is hard/impossible to do)

As much as we want to think that there will be only one bitcoin network, my gut tells me that if bitcoin is even mildly successful there will be many forking attempts.  Even though google dominates internet search, there are still so many other participants in that market.  Since most of us are very free-market oriented here, I don't see the forking itself as a problem.  I do, however, wonder if we should actively try to generalize the bitcoin research space?

Let's take a worse case scenario, that some perverted group with a lot of money comes along and starts a currency based on bitcoin that is exclusively for kiddie porn, or even regular porn for that matter.  If this group advertises bitcoin on their website, whether directly or indirectly it would be very easy for an "anti cryptocurrency" group to taint the entire bitcoin reputation.

I think one way we can head off reputation attacks like this, would be or us to actually generalize our "research."  For example, guns and bombs rely on physics, but generally speaking the reputation of a physicist is not linked to the use of physics as a whole, but merely his personal use of physics.

I feel that currently, perhaps due to political philosophy, the bitcoin community is "trying" to not endorse money laundering, tax evasion, and other things that generally get the mainstream riled up.  However, because most of us do not think like mainstream in the first place (eg, most of us might disagree with involuntary taxation), we hesitate to take a hard stance on things like "bitcoin and money laundering," or "bitcoin and drugs."

Therefore, I feel that what might be the best solution is actually the easiest.  What if we separate crypto-currency R&D, and specifications from implementation?  By this, I am essentially proposing that the core bitcoin community responsible for developing and maintaining the protocol and spec actually take the stance of endorsing nothing.

I think that Visa, Inc. can be a great role-model here.  All around the world people utilize the Visa transaction network.  Everything from daycares to adult bookstores in all different types of cultures accept Visa.  However, Visa itself never seems to be seen at fault for running a "morally diverse" transaction network.

In a nutshell, I'm wondering whether it is a mistake to have the production network so closely coupled with the R&D community.  Now that bitcoin seems to be gaining traction, perhaps we should think about creating more of an "arms length" organizational structure between R&D and implementation?