"Forking" as we know it today really just doesn't achieve its stated goal, and is trapped in the ideology of pseudo-meritocracy; the concept really needs a lot more development to be useful, and it's not a serious option for resolving governance problems today, even as a last resort (but still the only one we have).

The current model of how "forking" is supposed to work, completely ignores natural network effects, startup cost, power imbalances, sponsorship agreements, and a whole lot of other things that are necessary to account for to successfully diverge a project.