Even if that other project is better?
I don't think Android's developers should feel super duper sad that they killed Meego's chances of rising from obscurity.
Not sure how to measure "better" in this case. Better for RHEL clones usually means "less changes" than other clones and close to upstream. I guess "better" is support and speed of updates. So in case of a software project you can usually just look at the features and say "oh, look, can see how they added a,b,c and now it is exactly what I want" This is a cloning project, so the best feature is how closely it tracks upstream. But one can't know that unless one switches to it first, and I am guessing, there is enough antagonism in the community that many will not make that first step.
Sure, and I agree, but that's not what you said.
We already have that, it is called CentOS. If giving something for free means trying to trample another open source project, then 'No Thanks, I think I'll pass'.