Will the community fork be some sort of hard fork, and on what block, and any ESP we have now be available on that fork? Similar to Bitcoin Cash?
if the plan of a community fork is to continue esp development with the same exact road-map, then they don't need to do anything besides fork the repo at its current point and start to push out their own client.
The only scenario where a coin swap/ fork into a new network would be needed was if they decided to HF the rules at the same time as push out a new client that made it completely incompatible with the current client.
Assuming they dont HF any rules, the resulting client they pushed out would just be in an alternative client to choose from instead of just having the reference client (much like bitcoin knots is an alternative bitcoin client to bitcoin core but both work on the same network and with each other 100% fine). Having multiple client options isn't bad. you could still potentially develop some features on one client without the other having them and it would still work fine without splitting the network.
edit: although im unsure why at this stage in a product u would need to have an alternative client to the reference (cc's) client. you could just add to his code and make PR's which if the code helps i see no reason why he wouldnt merge that in
