It's actually interesting you bring this up, as it is one issue I've been thinking about for a while: the imbalance of power in cryptocurrency that exists depending because of different levels of programming skills (and/or the money to hire a programmer). My initial thought was something similar to what you're mentioning, a single software system that could embrace something like forking.

But that in turn led me to thoughts on a much more radical system with dramatically different economic underpinnings than current cryptocurrency systems. But it's a huge topic, and I plan to approach posting about it slowly, partly to bridge the gap between current economic thinking, and partly because some of my ideas about it are still unformed. I am planning to create a prototype of such a system that can be tweaked with time, as new ideas emerge.

As an aside, I find it mildly humorous that the spellchecker for this site's editor doesn't recognize the word "cryptocurrency".