The difference is you cited software projects, not hosted infrastructure. A person can contribute to a FOSS dev project and not incur expenses dependent on end-users activity. Hosting a fediverse application isn’t like that, somebody has to pay for the hosting and the hosting expenses will scale with user activity.
The projects I mentioned weren’t made for profit, but they are now so important that they are funded from donations. Both from users and corporate sponsors. With that money they are able to hire full-time developers. So they still cost our society money, but no ads or spyware is required. I think hosting could work the same way.
The difference is you cited software projects, not hosted infrastructure. A person can contribute to a FOSS dev project and not incur expenses dependent on end-users activity. Hosting a fediverse application isn’t like that, somebody has to pay for the hosting and the hosting expenses will scale with user activity.
The projects I mentioned weren’t made for profit, but they are now so important that they are funded from donations. Both from users and corporate sponsors. With that money they are able to hire full-time developers. So they still cost our society money, but no ads or spyware is required. I think hosting could work the same way.