CoHost staff actually talk to you and update you on timelines.
there's also less infighting, ofc, but like.... i really think a lot is just that on mastodon you're sorta kept in the dark and told to 'just check the issue tracker' where you realise glaring problems have languished in the issue tracker for 4 years.
I hate how the vibe of open source these days necessitates attention-driven design, but at least u could talk about it.
I'd think this less if mastodon didn't constantly market itself as a twitter replacement and not alternative, but false advertising without realizing you're false advertising is a thing that's rampant in Open Source, and mostly leads to a lot of wasted time and broken dreams by the people who believed you were talking about products and not aspirations.