People, please. The "Mastodon Board" (whatever that even means) could have Mr Satan in it, and you'd still be able to fork the software and/or run your own instance. None of y'all have ever had problems defederating from large instances, so don't even think about throwing that argument in.
Whatever your opinions are about this, it's unrealistic to expect this to remain a hobby project for two engineers. Maybe this is not the best way to solve this problem, but (again), Just Fork It™
@brunoph I think you're missing something important here — funders can set the agenda for positive developments in the feature set, architecture, federation, etc. We might not even recognise the forks in the road, the paths not taken because someone had a vision for something else.
Also the vast majority of users are not in a position to just fork it. An elite few can do that. Do the rest of us just not count?
@engagedpractx I'm not suggesting there are no risks. But should we expect individuals to toil away maintaining software because the alternative has risks? Should we expect them to dedicate the rest of their lives to this software just because they created it? What happens when they're no longer here?
Federated software should also mean decentralized stewardship. It shouldn't be up to one software maintainer to define the future of the fediverse as a whole.
@brunoph You're suggesting there's an easy solution — 'just' fork it.
I am fine with Boards and funders, I'm just pointing out the risks are opaque and the solutions are not easy and probably not technical either. They are about activated communities placing demands on the funding entity and its governance.
@engagedpractx sure, that's true. I think the core of my message should have been "people are still in control of the software they choose to use" rather than "forking is easy".
I still think the main risk today to the fediverse is how big certain individual instances have gotten, and that where I think more of the anxiety should be focused.
So perhaps this move could cause more people to move away from them, and that would be good, so I agree with you on that.
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