To branch or not to branch unique projects started from a common code set

Background:
We have been developing an embedded code base for a hardware platform using SVN as the code repository. We now have customers A, B, C and D each with unique software requirements. The embedded code base that we developed for our platform hardware will be the starting code base for each customer but the software requirements for each customer are different and will not be incorporated back into the embedded code base. Hopefully we will have customers E, F, etc. that will also be started from our embedded code base.
 
Questions:
1) Should we create branches off the embedded code base, one for customer A and one for customer B, etc., or should we create separate projects for each customer?
2) Should we create separate repositories for each project?

I have read several articles and posts on branching but all seemed to address branching of the same project, not using branching to start new projects from a common code base. Please answer the above questions and advise additional FAQs or "best practices" information on this topic.

Thanks,
John
Received on 2010-09-17 07:22:28 CEST