Edit comment Jen, thank you for writing up

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Jen, thank you for writing up your thoughts and motivations with Backdrop. It is this kind of explanation that's helpful in understanding why it exists and what the goals are.

That said, I don't find your reasons for why a fork is good for Drupal to be very compelling. I can understand feeling frustrated with complexity and I'm certain you know well the frustration of teaching Drupal 7, but a fork seems negative and is non-collaborative. "Sharing ideas and improvements" and "learn from successes & failures" are true, but they're true for any project, regardless of it being a fork of Drupal. That cross-pollination just has different levels of intensity based on compatibility, which leads me to seeing that those two points are predicated on the idea that Backdrop is a "stepping stone" for people who might leave Drupal. Yes, if people leave Drupal they will inevitably compare new code and procedures with old, including with how Drupal works and how they were involved. However, you and the other forkers are *creating* a departure point instead of attempting to further work towards improving Drupal 8. To expand your metaphor, a stepping stone is a stone that lets you make some of the progress away from your current position, not to come back to it.

Additionally I feel that you're doing a disservice in trying to suggest that Backdrop is part of the Drupal community in a way that helps. "Community" is a loaded term with lots of meanings, but in many regards Backdrop is attempting to create a new community with a different home, a different API, and different goals. There is overlap of people between the communities, and obviously similarity in the code, but I don't see how Backdrop could be considered a part of or collaborative with the Drupal community in any way.

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