At my local CostCo, there is a pathway that cuts across each row of parking spots. At various points along this path are the cart returns. The path is constantly full of carts, meaning that you can’t get to the cart returns. I get way too bent out shape about his every time I go.

Common pattern - the acqui-hire.

“These people are working in a problem area that we want to do better in. We’ll buy their company for their expertise.”

Whether they keep existing products or not is not a major factor in the decision and gets evaluated later. Often, because they want the people working on something new the existing products are put into maintenance mode or shut down.

Source: Have been acquired for both talent and for product. Seen both.

For those who don’t know, Bluesky isn’t really federated. The only way to host a non-Bluesky instance required 1TB of storage in July 2024, and 5 TB of storage in Nov 2024. Could be way more than that now.

You basically have to be a company to federate into the ATProto (Bluesky) ecosystem. You can’t just “stand up an instance”.

Lots of detail: https://dustycloud.org/blog/how-decentralized-is-bluesky/

(I know you’ve already realized that you were conflating Mastodon with Bluesky, I’m putting this here for others who come along so they can get the facts).