The decision of which fork to use should be made by the top 19 witnesses that everyone votes for. But this isn't the case at all. It is solely up to Steemit Inc, due to that license clause. (Yes I know they have a ton of SP to vote for witness as well, but that doesn't bother me, the license does.)

The way I read it, that's the case now - the chain is the one defined by the witnesses, voted for by stakeholders. That's the chain the software is for. That doesn't require any approval or authorization from Steemit.

The clause is for clones/altcoins using the same codebase: it could cause tremendous confusion (especially considering that the blue steem logo up there in the top left is effectively unrestricted for use) if someone made a completely unrelated chain using the codebase and tried to pass it off as affiliated with this community of STEEM stakeholders in some way.