i'd like you to consider that making it open source will indeed attract a shitton of attention, and everyone will litter the repository with hundreds of code changes, all that need discussion, review, etc
i've previously used a social network that operates that way: it's called mastodon. i personally really didn't like the way the leader ran that repository, especially his opinions about user experience. but i'm also like a speck of dust to him. it was my special interest UI change that i thought improved the website. to him it was tuesday.
at the end of the day, someone(s) need to approve and deploy and test changes, and cohost is still understaffed to do that. in order to actually be a community project, rather than just "technically open source" (source code available, but contributions are unwelcome), would be a massive undertaking.
i want to be very clear that i'm not sub-chosting anybody or trying to call anybody out.
this is meant as an informational chost about why something that some people see as an "obvious solution" is anything but easy, and might end up in the current staff actually being far more busy than they are now. even just saying "no" to hundreds of people (especially those who won't take "no" for an answer), would eat up a significant amount of their precious time. and gathering enough people to be let into a trusted circle in order to review/approve things on their behalf would be extremely nontrivial.
