The point of using testnet and not another bitcoin clone

One point that people are bringing up about the idea of using test net coins is that I should just go fork bitcoin and run my own chain to play with.

The number one reason why I advocate using testnet is that because it *is* bitcoin we don't have to worry about trusting the source code. I trust the bitcoin devs as does everyone else. They have a clear and open process for adjusting the code, it's a public process and trustworthy.

What happens if I fork the code is that I myself become the dev of whatever new coin I come up with. That means users have to trust me to be a) competent b)timely c)committed and more importantly, trust me not to introduce some malicious Trojan into the code.

The vast majority of people who use bitcoin are not able to read or understand the source code yet still want to use it and trust it. What I am talking about is building an experimental alt community, based on bitcoin, where we don't need to worry about trusting some new, nameless dev.

Terracoin is a perfect example of how anonymous developers can become the vulnerability in a project. When the coin was already on the exchanges the dev grew frustrated, the updates were released in a rushed and poorly manages process and people ended up loosing money as a result.

With bitcoin testnet developers can focus on building new, perhaps even heretical (for bitcoin) things and trying things without needing to worry about the underlying stability and trust of the coin itself.