That’s not even true, I run my own mailserver for private and a business and it works like expected.

Yet people claim it writes all their programming code…

The load distributes across more shoulders automatically.

If you only host a server for yourself and 10 friends it costs next to nothing, if you have a big operation it can get just as expensive, it depends on what you are willing to do.

With centralized systems there is no choice but for the one centralized host to host everything.

Funny you would think that using the fediverse. Discord has exactly the same problems Reddit and Twitter had where at any moment someone for whatever reason could alter the deal significantly.

Your point is that copyright law is easier to enforce than trademark law? I doubt it. I personally don’t care that the lawyers you will definitely need for this and for long do exactly.

If you take over a project of this scale you need to make this your job and thus get paid. There’s a good reason Louis hasn’t just pushed this out as his hobby project but hired developers.

If you can’t it won’t happen. My point is more: If it was possible to take over, would it really happen? Extremely unlikely.

You really don’t know the history of Microsoft, do you?

The interface gets a little better and that’s it basically? (Alternatively: They try to spin a social medium around it and fail somewhat and succeed somewhat?)

Do you not see the contradiction in this statement? Where do you find the line of what is stealing and “working as intented”?

If you redistribute someone else’s open source code as open source but change nothing why would I get it from you and not the original developer? There is no incentive and no reward to “steal”.

If you make enough changes to create additional value I might and then it is “working as intended”

Exactly and the model of make changes and remove trademark has worked very well for them. Why not introduce arbitrary other limitations when they are clearly not neccessary?

The developer can yank the software from under you, he can change the monetisation model, or he can drop support for the software. With Free or Open Source software you could just take over the responsibility of maintainership or outsource it some other developer you can trust instead.

Sure, good point but in the real world this will never happen.

If Mozilla suddenly decides to implode you won’t just casually take over Firefox or hire another maintainer to develop it for you.

In theory this sounds nice but for any software that is of any real complexity (and thus use) it is pretty much irrelevant.

Same thing with centralised services only that you have no options to choose from

Thing is nobody will do that because once AI finds a way to spazz out that is totally unpredictable (black box) everything might just be gone.

It’s a totally unrealistic scenario.

I mean that is exactly what programming is except you type to an AI and have it type the script. What is that good for?

Could have just typed the script in the first place.

It ChatGPT can use the API it can’t be too complex otherwise you are in for a surprise once you find out what ChatGPT didn’t care about (caching, usage limits, pricing, usage contracts)

Unfortunately everything AI does is kind of shitty. Sure you might have a query for which the chosen AI works well but you might as well not.

It you accept that it sometimes just doesn’t work at all sure AI is your revolution. Unfortunately there are not too many use cases where this is helpful.

This happend to me a lot 10-15 years ago but since then has never again happened to me. With the noteable exception of Arch Linux which does tell you to read update notes though.

If the fediverse idea doesn’t work out and it’s yet another company the cycle is bound to continue.

A big chance is in front of us to break the cycle!

What do we do if it doesn’t? Just crawl back and apologize?

I kinda grew out of it. It was funny when I was an edgy teenager but it got progressively more cringeworthy as time progressed for me, even though the content may not have changed much.