Pretty standard open source contentiousness, nothing to concern yourself with as a first time node runner, just go for it!
Bitcoiners just love fighting with each other, a tale as old as time
Discussion
I'm surprised you don't see Core's node dominance to be more of a threat, regardless of the spam pushing, censoring trannies running things over there. I thought we liked decentralization.
We do like it, it's all a matter of perspective, many people argue knots is the one doing the censorship
Run whatever node implementation you believe in
True, I wish Knots was a more serious alternative. I'd like to see others.
Check out Libbitcoin
It's WIP