[Estragon]

  ...over one year later and they have nothing to show for it
  and they're still begging for money.

I have no dog in this fight, but your comment confuses me, because there seems to be quite a lot going on. If I look at the "contribute" page[1] and the list of sites publically running diaspora at this stage[2], I see a great deal of progress and useful code. Not a finished product yet, by any means, but they definitely have something pretty concrete to show for their efforts so far.

[1] http://diasporafoundation.org/get_involved

[2] https://github.com/diaspora/diaspora/wiki/Community-supporte...

[jemka]

I believe his comment was relative and not to be taken literally. Yes, code has been written, but that is hardly a counter argument to the facts presented.

[Estragon]

It appears that not only has code been written, it's been publically deployed and used for social networking. I'd say that's a fair step beyond "nothing to show for it."