Composting the Last Five Years of the Fediverse

The last five years have changed the #Fediverse. What started, grassroots, commons-based native path has become much more visible. More people have arrived, more organizations have become interested. There are more conferences, more funding conversations, more institutional involvement and more attempts to make the Fediverse part of the wider technology landscape. Some of this is useful, but it also creates a question that is harder to avoid – what do we actually want to carry forward from the last five years? Perhaps the answer is not to defend everything that has happened, or to reject it all. Perhaps we need to compost it. Composting means taking what has grown, including the dead material, separating out what is useful and allowing something new to grow from it. lets look at an example – the paywall is not just about the ticket – this becomes visible in arguments about conference tickets and paywalls. At one level, the argument is simple, events cost money, venues cost money,…