> Now lets assume, that > there are indeed some MAME derivates and to make you a little angry (like you do with > your states) , Retroarch had become very popular and has a huge fanbase. Would you > still think that the majority of the developers would still stay at official MAME?
Retroarch disables and removes all of MAME's developer-support features. You literally can't develop or debug MAME drivers on it, so developers would naturally stick with real MAME.