You're not talking about complexity, you're talking about variety. Are you arguing we need to kill AROS 68k and Cloanto's distributions?
No, complexity. Really. How complex does it become to keep a software and hardware working in an unstable environment, and who would be willing to write software against a moving target, and design hardware for it?
You're dodging the actual question. Let's ignore the lack of Reaction and say 3.9 and 3.1.4 are the same - that still leaves Amiga OS 3.1.4, AmigaOS 3.X, AfA OS 4, AROS 68k and BoingBag 4 plus the individual patches and libraries released on the Net. The existence of all these branches did not stop you from releasing 3.1.4, did it? So where's the limit before we loose you? Five, six, seven branches?
3.1 through 3.1.4.1 have the same interfaces. 3.x has the same interfaces than 3.9, or sort of, but it is a pointless product that is behind 3.1.4 in every aspect. Os 4 is a different market (PPC) I do not mind. AfA 4.x I consider a dead horse, and fixes from BB4 were integrated into 3.1.4 as far as possible, I hope. 3.1.4 was the attempt to collect all the fixes, and form a new stable ground, so no, it did not stop anyone, but getting rid of it was part of the motivation.
I'm saying it at least gives us a chance of fixing these problems, while what you are doing right now just feeds the lawyers and is guaranteed to create tons more problems when (not if) Hyperion collapses.
It may fix some things, at the expense of creating a lot of other problems, and ignoring some problems that remain unfixed, and become unfixable on the way.
Right now, Ben is controlling development - and you prefer that to open source.
Well, I would be hoping that there would be somewhat more control in the technical direction level, and less control on the IP level, and I do not prefer "open source development", but "a more transparent development", so that is not quite the same.
So as far as this discussion is concerned you are pro Ben. Which means you should be able to explain why Ben's control over your project doesn't mean it's doomed.
No, the world is not black and white. Meaning I'm against open source does not mean I'm for Ben, that is just naive. Cloanto, however, is either acting foolish, or is trying to fool you. If they really want to go where they claim, they are destroying their product and their market, just for the attempt at looking nice.