OMG, not another pointless branch-out just for the sake of it! Haven't we had enough of those...? Is this the true long-term goal of the bounty project? Would be *very* interesting to know that now, because it suddenly feels a lot more pointless and futile...
Who is talking about a "pointless branch-out"? Zune first needs to reach parity. But once Zune reaches parity, a decision needs to be taken: Let MUI dictate the pace, or move forward even if it means adding functionality that's not already there in MUI.
If MUI keeps moving forward at a good pace and delivers what is needed, then great. If not, letting Zune stagnate out of fear of future incompatibilities would be bad. In that case it would certainly not be pointless. I don't think anyone wants Zune to add new incompatible functionality for no good reason.
In any case, that is far down the road. First we need MUI3.8 compatibility and then MUI4 compatibility, which will both be beneficial regardless of where Zune goes next.
But this is another reason why ports of Zune to MOS and AmigaOS are important. If/when Zune reaches that point, *if* the decision is made to evolve Zune without waiting for MUI, then 1) people can opt to use Zune on all the platforms if they wish and/or 2) further enhancements to Zune can be more easily re-used on the other OS's if they would like to copy the improvements.