The beauty of Mastodon is not only that it is free and open but that it’s federated. You can fork it without losing access to the network or your social graph. There’s no reason a hundred forks couldn’t exist.
Also, when did forking become an insult? As far as I’m concerned, it’s the biggest compliment you can pay a project. And if you fork and stay federated, you’re actually helping to strengthen the fediverse!
What you can’t do is force people to build what you want out of entitlement.
@aral
I have the feeling that people miss a important aspect if they suggest forks as a solution for the current "problem". A important part of long term success is building a healthy dev community. Hundreds of one-person forks aren't sustainable and will slow down progress. Think about a world where all KDE, Gnome or Linux devs would work on their own fork instead of working together. I hardly believe that this would result in a better and more sustainable ecosystem.
@raucao
I think this are not good counterexamples. First (highly personal opinion) I would be surprised if most of the GNOME/KDE forks you mentioned would still exists in 10+ years as healthy and active projects. Second, non of them split up in multiple one-person projects, most devs stick to the "original", same for most users and distributions. I don't think Mastodon has a size that can handle it. When 15 of the 20 devs split up, sustainability is at risk
@aral
