False dichotomy. It's a step forward toward a better experience for all who want to write systems code with strict ownership semantics. It may be acting as a negotiation tactic now, but it's existence is only possible as a result of genuine effort of the folks involved in its creation. And if it's existence causes Rust team members to continue to publicly out themselves as pretentious try-hards who take the B out of BDFL, then it will become more and more genuinely important and useful for someone to have already put the work into maintaining a real fork.