[G Tablet General] K J Rad:
You're absolutely right. Tons of good information here. And some of it is coming from people with weeks of experience in successfully flashing between 1.1 and 1.2 dev branches on a nearly daily basis mostly to assist those with serious problems on either branch. I would hope at least as much importance would be attached to those opinions.

There are risks involved in transitioning from one to the other but they are no greater than the risk one first takes when they choose to mod. Risk may be higher for the uninitiated user but can still be mitigated by the use of readily available tools and information. CWM may be the path of least resistance for the serious modders at this point, but it may not be appropriate for those that prefer to dabble with something closer to the manufacturers intent.

There are some minor differences in overall capability between the branches but they are insignificant for most users in day to day use. For devs and heavy modders that is where the real differences lie. Each branch maintains its own codebase and has a vested interest in gaining the most traction out of reusing the existing code for as long as possible and that is actually a good thing. Divergent development means competition for improved products and more choices for the users. For example, we've already seen some CWM capabilities rolled into the 1.2 stock recovery. So in the long term, which bootloader is used for which branch is really inconsequential so long as there is a bridge to the other path.

The currently available 1.2 ROMs include a fairly decent implementation of a bridge by providing both stock and CWM recovery options that can be interchanged at will. Becoming familiar with those tools and their proper use in the chosen environment is the key to success. For now. The real questions are just how stable is that bridge and for how long will it last?

It's conceivable that at some point it will become far too difficult to maintain that bridge and that is when forking really becomes more problematic for the majority of users. We already face a "downleveling" requirement to provide a path back to 1.1 safely. How long is it reasonable to assume that will be practical? At what point do bootoader requirements make it impossible to continue to add features to an "old" development path?

The answer is that it likely won't matter in the long run at all. Forks and convergences happen in software development all the time. The market (users) will let us know what they want and need and we will likely respond with what they ask for. As long as the original code can be flashed back to the device there will always be a path back to either branch. If the manufacturer provides something new and interesting it will probably find it's way into our work. If our work becomes commercially viable enough it will be purchased or "borrowed" by the manufacturer. That's what happens in a maturing software environment.

The bottom line for the moment is that we are the experts for supporting both paths. The manufacturer isn't likely to care to support a path to what they consider a dead branch regardless of how important it is to a handful of devs with a small cadre of modders. It will be up to us to leverage the skills and knowledge we have to support our community. And our community can only grow if we are ready to support people coming from that manufacturers environment. That being the case... we probably need to start asking what someone has been using before directing people to the old standby threads that start with "Install CWM..." unless we want to create more trouble for ourselves. We certainly won't score any points with new users when following our instructions results in them bricking their tablets.