Did you even read his post about WHY he wants to fork the code? Merged mining. If we can merge mine this coin with Bitcoin, and had pools like bitparking.com take it up, imagine the value skyrocket. Bitcoin has Master merge mining code already so if anything, it's getting closer to bitcoin, not farther. This is so far behind bitcoin it might still be using Berkley DB.
One of the developers did a pull and ran a diff on the source code, a prudent security precaution. The differences were the coin prefix, the genesis block hash, and the BTE/BTC string replacements. At the time of it's release, it was exactly current with bitcoin. It is within a week or so of the current bitcoin release.
It is a peer to bitcoin. I see it's strength as a place where either micro-transactions can aggregate, or where a narrow industry group can focus their transactions. I think several of them operating in parallel can help with the "scale" problem as the number of users grow.
There is yet another new chip for the sex industry. This is an example of a narrow industry focus where Bytecoin could find a niche. My own interests, for example, might be in the worldwide coffee trade.
