Randy: T2300/2300AD was not rules compatible with any edition of T2K, any more than it was rules compatible with CT, nor TNE.
TNE 1 and 2.0 had only three difficulty levels, very different stat sets, and very different combat methodologies. And were mutually incompatible (one's a 3-18 stat, %ile skills game, the other a 1-10 stat, 1-10 skills game...) with each other. TNE was the jump of the main traveller line over to the House Engine.
It's closest mechanical relative is MegaTraveller.... although all GDW RPG's drew from the prior ones. Like MT, it's an outgrowth from CT's rules with DGP influences. Unlike MT, it was done in house, and is not the CTU.
Of course, the CTU wasn't really strongly the OTU at the time, either. MT was still a ways off, T2K was not even a similar system. And what would become the OTU was strongly present in the later CT supplements, but was only vaguely presented in the core rules (TTB and Starter both mention the CTTU pretty explicitly).
For Mal's benefit, the reason this matters is that, until 1996, Traveller was NOT "Marc Miller's". It was GDW's. It was a group project, for which Marc had the initial kicker, and from which Marc had been partially removed. It's important to understand the process. Especially when YOU, Mal, assert:
What people think is or isn't Traveller is another source of pointless argument. They're all Traveller whether we like it or not, because it says so on the cover. Obviously there's no obligation to like every version of the game that comes out, but it's pretty meaningless to claim that a version "isn't Traveller" when it clearly says that it is.
for the more primal discussion at hand, tho, a better comparison would be the old and new BSG series... same basic concepts, build anew from there. (I may find the new BSG disgusting, but it sells.) That is what is needed, and what Marc will most likely NOT do.
Just as BSG was held back by the original's campy nature, the variety of extended canon (Novels, comics, games), and even the nature of the characters. The new one took a good look, chose their commonalities, and literally dumped overboard all the rest of the old.
The CT, MT, TNE, and T4 supplements have, in a very real way, become baggage, of the same type as the old BSG setting.. T20 and GT both have the potential to likewise become baggage. GT has not tied itself tightly to prior editions. T20 has. If Marc wants to mold traveller to a new edition, he needs to do an edition free of the baggage.
Personally, I think the Spinward Marches would be so much better as a setting if (a) they hadn't been done to death so many times and (b) if they weren't part of something larger. If the entire Traveller universe was just the Marches then you could really go to town on the detail - a GT:Sword Worlds style book for each subsector would be rather good.
I've not seen GT-SW... but the level of detail presented in the Traveller Adventure was constraining enough for many.
Too much detail is as bad as not enough. Until I saw a map of "Known Space", I assumed the marches were a sector or two away from capital, not 4.
. You know darn well that Traveller:2300 was later changed to 2300AD because GDW admitted that it had nothing to do with the (Classic) Traveller Universe. As far as I'm concerned, Traveller:2300 is a non-entity for the purposes of discussion - it was a marketting error that GDW made and was subsequently replaced by 2300AD. And either way, it was a totally different setting anyway. 
