The last thing I want for D&D is to see a Catholic/Protestant-style schism. The more splintered things are, the harder it is to find a group who wants to play the same thing You are into. I'm on the Board of Directors for the Online Gaming League (around for years before WotC thought to name their licensing schema "OGL") and I've seen such fracturing of communities kill more than a few successful video games — I'd hate to see the same thing happen to D&D even more than I'd hate to see Paizo fall on hard time.
+++ Well said. Sadly this has happened to my group as we split over 2nd edition and going to 3.0, most of our group didn't want the change and the few that did ended up starting a new group but it wasn't the same and it actually ended several friendships that had lasted over 15 yrs. When 3.5 came out the fighting started again as we had just bought the 3 main books and a few had purchased other sourcebooks. This is the new schism in our group and for the most part the reaction to a "new" version of DnD is being met with the same reaction as if you just found a rotting corpse in you bathroom "oh no not again"! I will say that you have several valid points and I will try to look for the silver lining in a new version of our beloved game.