On my end, I want to make it clear that any proposals that don't have a credible story about user trust and safety are dead in the water, and this is basically non-negotiable. I know far too much about the issues involved to be flexible on this point.
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Most of the issues that come with Running A Website aren't code issues. The code is the "easy" part, so open sourcing cohost would do only so much.
I love open-source, I use open source shit a bunch, I run my own Mastodon instance but... I don't know if I would trust a hypothetical "open source cohost" to keep the "product vision" alive. Maybe it would be possible and I would be proven wrong but a lot of what made cohost special was how against the grain it was as a piece of software.
The moment you open source your shit, you have to answer calls from randos to transform it in 40 opposite ways and no matter the decision you take you're wrong. Open source projects break people for real.
I trust that the use-case outlined previously (display archives like they were shown onsite) will either be covered by the official data exports or that someone will come in clutch. Prechoster exists so I think it will be possible even if @staff doesn't provide it.
I don't care about cohost's code surviving, I want the cohost spirit to survive.
I want to see a spiritual successor to cohost in 2, 5 or 10 years. I want to live in the world where someone who used cohost got so inspired by it they tried to replicate it and succeed where it failed.
That's what I want for me and for us (for eggbug).
