[MrOwen]

Can you not have both? Each federated instance costs money to upkeep. Some instances could elect for collective ownership or even elect to donate for develop (probably this needs to be carefully considered to deter corporate ownership). I like your idea but I think there needs to be an interim step and for now, maybe that's federation. Maybe we'll get to the place you speak of... one day.

[hkt]

We won't get there while people would rather rely on doing a bit of systems administration and hoping a developer can pay the bills. Not without strictly ideologically motivated admins and devs.