So why can’t the software be modified to increase the cap to 30 million or 100 million in the future? Makes it no different from printing currency today.... so not nearly as resistant to inflation as the coiners make it out to be.
The software is open source and there are many, many copies of it throughout the bitcoin network. I think it would take universal agreement (impossible) across all bitcoin holders to make a change -- and why would they.
On the other hand, there's nothing to prevent people from firing up bitcoin clones based on the same algorithms, or bitcoin lookalikes based on slightly different algorithms. As a matter of fact there are many virtual currencies out in the wild. For a while (I don't know if it's still the case), companies were starting up new virtual currencies as a way to fund venture startups.