Because 99.9% of people will never self host. They would much rather just buy a product that is not setup as a scam. The scam part is less important to most people than the lack of effort required.

This isn't a thing to get into for the money. It would be about the FOSS aspect. Doing something like this would not break even for the time and labor involved. It might be worth doing for positive digital neighbors, but I am not at all interested in doing anything for negative or rude people.

I come from a background of being a buyer for a chain of bike shops where I spent millions of dollars based upon knowledge of how such markets work. The entry level customer is all that really matters. The extra stuff is just to woo them into the store.

In a place like this, if you engage, you're actually irrelevant. If you want to target growth, get a lurker to engage for the first time. Getting some random lurkers to buy into the hardware to self host because they care about software freedom is far far more effective than the current ecosystem. When servers are not updated, and people shut down because of administration, it says this is not viable for the average person with a life. So make this easy for the individual. It is such an obvious thing to do.

The present system is basically like go compile OpenWRT for your router and people whining about how it is not fucking hard. It is not, but most people just do nor care to try it. They just want to buy a device, plug it in, and be done. Half of these devices are on factory original passwords. This is the real scope of what people are capable of and expect. The mismatch is easily solved by packing the fediverse as a device. The alternates are great for the 0.1%. I am not talking about you all. I am talking about something that could go from 0.1% to 5% of the fediverse is self hosted, and likely much larger. The whole endeavor would be like a coop socialist kind of thing from the ground up.

It is not about the people that already host. It is about enabling many more by giving them an option to buy a path of least resistance. In exchange, it creates a potential revenue source in a completely untapped demographic. The subscription/donations demographic is like a very unique and niche market. The vast majority of people do not exist within that space. Most people do not have the financial stability to engage like this. It is not that they are unable to accumulate adequate funds, it is that their pay fluctuates over time and their baseline constraints are far more stressful than spending from times of surplus and opportunity. Catering only to those with such surplus and gatekeeping the complexity of self hosting is massively limiting adoption.

The rule in managing a chain of retail stores is that, no matter how you select products to stock in stores, it is impossible to only select products that will all sell on one platform. How you manage the overburden always determines your long term success. You must employ other platforms and demographics to prioritize the mobility of cash flow.

Similarly but inverted, this place has a slice of all demographics. Efforts tailored to the various subsets should tap entirely new potential. A fool imagines they can convert the unstable poor'r into a reliable stable income source via donations. Someone like myself has means but not a situation that is compatible. If I have some tangible thing to purchase, I can make that happen. I do not have any subscriptions in life for anything at all. Heck, I won't even shop on any of my devices I use regularly because I only buy what I intend to go looking to purchase with intent. That is not common, but what is common are spontaneous people that need time to align their finances with their desires. That person is likely to dread paying $5 every month compared to $250 in May when they get a couple thousand dollars on a tax return. Expecting the public to float the stability is stupid. That is not how the real world works. Real businesses always float the overhead. I'm talking about how to free the masses to self host everything for the cost of a nice router spent once with no techno leet filter.

Not in terms of kernel supported encodings and long term kernel support, from what I have seen. I have not looked into this in depth. However, looking at git repo merged pulls, issues raised, and the lack of any consistent hardware commitments or consensus, implies to me that the hardware is very unstable in the long term. When I see any hardware with mostly only base Debian support, it screams that the hardware is on an orphaned kernel and will likely never get to mainline. The same applies to Arch to a lesser degree. Debian has the primary tool chain for bootstrapping and hardware hacking. When it is the primary option supported, I consider the hardware insecure and unsafe to connect to the internet. I've seen a few instances where people are talking about the limited forms of encoding support and the incomplete nature of those that do exist. It is far more important to have hardware that will be supported with mainline kernel security updates and is compatible with the majority of encodings. It would be terrible to find out the thing could not support common audio or video codecs. IIRC there was an issue along these lines with the RISC-V PineTab.

I know the primary goto for RISC-V is SiFive, but I have not seen a goto LTS processor from them in terms of third party consistent use.

Plus, while more open is mor betterer, RISC-V is not full proof from a proprietary blob either. The ISA addresses the monopolistic tyranny and extortion of players like Intel, but there is nothing preventing the inclusion of 3rd party proprietary module blocks. The entire point is to create an open market for the sale and inclusion of IP blocks that are compatible with an open standard. Nothing about these blocks is required to be open. I don't know if such a thing could be set to a negative ring more privileged than the kernel, but I expect this to be the case.

@Dmitry ☮️
Тут параллельно в чатике возник вопрос про фидо и современность. Могу и тут написать, что думаю по этому поводу. 😀

"Только фидо современный пипл не вытянет.
Там нет стикеров, фототчек, видосов, голосовух и кружочков. А только многабукафф! Ниасилят! 😀"
Раз уж "Hubzilla -- эта ПЦ сложна!" 😀)))