p: Save virtual copies' settings as xmps

You don't need to vote for it as it's your own 'Idea'

I'd love to, but I can't vote for my own topic.

It has zero votes because even you didn't vote for it yourself!  😉

The reason why I don't vote for it is because -although I like the idea- I do not think it is practical (for reasons I explained) and I would not want Adobe to spend resources on it. There are plenty of things that are much more important in my opinion, and this can be dealt with in other ways already (save as DNG, export as catalog).

If you like the idea, why has it still 0 votes?)

The implementation is the Adobe's job, we shouldn't worry about it.

If adding the info to one xmp is complicated, they can just add a button "create real raw copies", so each file would have it's own settings as usual. Anyway, my main concern is to preserve ALL the variants' settings outside the LR catalogue.

"So that we could share it with a retoucher, for instance, without converting to several DNGs." 

Another way to share edits, virtual copies, and other metadata: Use File > Export As Catalog and File > Import From Another Catalog. When sharing a small number of photos, this is very lightweight and fast.

I like the idea, but I think it would be very complicated. In the end you would still have one image with two possible settings, so how is the receiving software going to know which one to use? It would mean that all the software packages in the world that can read XMP sidecar files, would have to be updated to understand this 'dual xmp' feature...

Another advantage of this: if we developed the files in LR and then switched to another computer without LR, we still could open and edit all the variants in Phtoshop (ACR).