Yea, generally fediverse projects have moved slowly. Mastodon has basically the same problems AFAICT despite being bigger and wealthier.
In a way I’ve been wondering if the fediverse is a kind of trial run for modern open source culture and what it can do other than packages for specific languages without the sponsorship of big corps. So far, it’s been really cool and super easy to take for granted. But also revealing I think in how hard it is to get things going when people need to make a living and everyone expects the internet to be free.
The performance implications of the protocol have been an elephant in the room for sure. I’ve never seen anyone do any sort of analysis.
And its quality as a foundation for a federated ecosystem seem definitely questionable. Especially as its main champion, Evan, seems super defensive about it and the idea of upgrading it. Sadly, it seems they’re an older tech person and see the protocol as their life’s work. So any proposal for starting again just runs into resistance. That there’s a weird cult around the protocol doesn’t help either.
As for the lemmy devs being antagonistic to contributions. I’ve heard that too but am suspicious. I’ve certainly seen 3rd party contributions go through. The whole image deletion episode was bad though. They even admitted to it to some extent.
I used to think they were way too “cranky” … but I’ve actually come around to the idea they push about not being too demanding of open source devs. It’s a serious issue with burnout being real and sustainability being vital for the fediverse. I was an early firefish user and saw that whole team, instance and project implode from the inside.
Would the devs be better at community management with proper salaries and community support and donations? Prob not! But some form of community manager could probably go far (even now if anyone is up for it) which seems viable if the support base got bigger.
I’m personally hoping to try to contribute by sometime this year, so I guess I’ll see how it goes and let you know if you like!
With the other group based platforms coming along (piefed and nodebb and maybe sub links) I’m hoping it becomes a richer part of the fediverse.