I don't think rkt is a valid candidate. People are already used to the basic of Docker command. There is no reason to change to something else. If rkt decides to reproduce the feature set, how is that different from a fork?
The tiny amount of existing early adopters can be made to adopt something else one more time.
One of the reasons to avoid a fork is the confusion caused by two kind of similar but not quite the same implementations that diverge slowly over time.
rkt is unlikely to just copy the feature set of Docker, but they provide competition in implementing new ideas and as it's not intended to be identical there's less confusion.