I believe 22.2 was inappropriate and would be glad to see a movement of legitimate witnesses who rejected it going forward. However, my opinion on this is practically irrelevant. Steem distribution is so incredibly centralized that there are only about two dozen users whose voice actually matters for voting witnesses in or out of the top 20. The largest one seems to have a policy of never talking to anyone, at least in public; several of the others are the very witnesses who instituted the fork in the first place. So I think it's very reasonable for you to be worried about the fork being reinstated, and I doubt you'll get any reassurance on that front short of coming to a public agreement with the existing witnesses. They have quite effectively engineered the chain to ensure that the userbase cannot reasonably vote them out of office.
RE: Progress being made