“Sometimes there’s a man… I won’t say a “hero,” because what’s a hero? But sometimes there’s a man who… well, he’s the man for his time and place!” – Sam Elliot (the Stranger) from the glorious The Big Lebowski
You know that classic quote about standing on the shoulders of giants (and pioneers)? Honestly, in so many ways, that’s how I truly feel about the good ol’ Fediverse.
So, to sum up-- who are YOUR heroes here, and what does keep you hanging on here, baby…?
Because I’m a dirty commie who believes in the adage “give a brick, get a house”.
Something that is built by a community will always survive longer than a corporate profit-motive alternative.
If one instance turns to crap, there will always be others to fill the gap. It’s the same reason most FOSS software exists, because the community wants it too. As long as there are people that are enthusiastic about something, they’ll keep it around as long as they have the tools to do so (source code). That is the ultimate power of Federation and of FOSS in general; it was built by humans, for humans for motives that are separate from profit.
If Gimp went away tomorrow, someone would fork it the very next day because they want to keep using it. If a Fediverse instance gets filled with nazis tomorrow, someone will create a new instance the very next day and people will move to that and then defederate from the hateful one.
I firmly believe that if humanity is to have a future, this is the way that it has to be, and I’m going to champion that mentality everywhere I can.
That essentially happened with Gimp, I believe the current development team has few if any ties to the original developers. It just didn’t get forked. (I mean it did, but only to change the branding, it’s a bit of a special case)