Thanks for the great questions, and thanks to everyone, especially xeroc for all these great answers.
1) how many developers are working on the bitshares? Are there any independent
developers not "controlled" by dan larimer? Is development being organized
solely through the github framework?
No single developer is working on bitshares. .. thats because bitshares is a brand .. a ecosystem ..
What you most certainly mean is either the bitshares toolkit which is developed
by the developers of Invictus Innovations and some others .. (should all be
mentioned at the team page at bitshares.org)
... or you are talking about bitshares-x (a 'fork' of the toolkit) .. which is
basically also "maintained" and not developed (same people, just different
legal entity)
A 'fork' in the toolkit already? Please describe this more. What are these two 'forks', who is doing them, which one is used in the wallet, which one do the delegates use....? What different dirrections are these forks taking?
My guess is that Dan controls about 100M to 180M BTSX .. (just a guess)
So that is around 5% to 9%, respectively of all bitshares, right? What evidence do you have for this? I've heard that the largest single stake holder is about 10%, but again, no evidence was provided. but it sounds like Bitshares X is more widely distributed than any other currency. In other words not very many people with enough stake to take things over, or kill the market if they decide to sell.
3) does Dan have any official "policy" in the event of a conflict between him
and the delegates?
A huge threat, right now, is Dan dying in an accident of any kind. The kind of governance like you are asking about is also a huge problem, and in my opinion, what is holding the entire industry back. But, in my opinion, the bitshares community, with their voting systems, and other systems in the work, they could be the first real crypto currency community to solve this problem in a way that not only amplifies the Bytemasters wisdom, but in a way that amplifies the wisdom of the entire crowd. But this, by no means, has happened yet, so is definitely still a concern.