No, nothing, I wasn't asking for permission. I'm just venting... ain't this website my own personal group therapy session??
No, that's The Big Purple. We're the anti-snowflake blowtorch forum where ideas that can't be defended come to die in a fire.
Now, I'm not OSR, but my system started off as a retro-clone of 4E precisely because the GSL associated with it did NOT make it something that could just be cut-and-paste copied in the way the OGL allowed of other editions and if I was going to go to all that work I was at least going to fix some of the more glaring errors. There was also a potential market as many people in my circles felt quite alienated by 5e and its throwing of every good idea from 4E (contrary to what some people think it was not universally horrible) under the bus.
Similarly, the system had a LOT of bloat and the digital character builders were becoming unusable due to software compatibility issues so creating a consolidated document so players wouldn't need to reference dozens of documents just to find the option that let their character do what their concept needed also felt like a worthwhile goal.
The designer in me also remembered the 4E designers claiming they went into the project with the idea of questioning everything... no sacred cows. So, if I was intending to create a spiritual successor for the people who enjoyed 4E's innovations rather than 5e's nostalgia, then I too should follow that mantra and question every last assumption made in the design of 4E to see if there wasn't a better/more fun way to do things.
As a result, over several years of playtesting and player feedback the mechanics morphed significantly. The first to die because I didn't like it anyway was a lot of the narrative mechanics (ex. measuring durations by elements like "end of the encounter" or "once per encounter" was replaced with real time durations). Next to die because I trying to build mass combat rules into the system from the start was the insane quadratic scaling that 4E applied to everything such that something more than three levels above your party level was deadly and everything three or more levels below was a joke.
The net result of those two was a much more simulationist and sandbox-friendly system and also into a system that is perfectly tailored to the campaign setting I've linked to it... which once upon a time was the norm; each game having its own bespoke game system to go along with its unique setting; not trying to hammer the same mechanics into setting where they're much less of a good fit.
Anyway... I appreciate the OSR titles that swerve away from the base for what they are... a designers attempt to create their own perfect system to go with their settings.
And the thing is... that's how D&D started too. It started out as just "someone's long list of house-rules" for the Chainmail wargame. 1e, 2e, 3e, 4e and 5e were all just "someone's long list of house-rules" for OD&D. Palladium Fantasy got its start as Kevin's "long list of hose-rules" for early D&D. Pathfinder was just "someone's long list of house-rules" for 3.5e.
Your argument is basically, McDonalds was the first fast food place, so why would anyone ever want to create a fast food place with a different menu? Why would anyone go to any other fast food burger place when there's a McDonalds you can go to instead?
Because sometimes McDonalds isn't what you're looking for.