I’m not well-read on this topic but have a lot of interest in this area.
from a post by tobi, GoToSocial dev:
“making it” in corpo social media and “making it” in fedi software development are basically opposites, because reaching “sustainability” in one looks completely different from reaching “sustainability” in another: the criteria for success on that front absolutely do not map from one to the other. […] “success” in open source software dev basically means you’ve made something semi-useful that doesn’t suck too much ass, and you can afford groceries and you like doing the work. Large user counts are irrelevant if not actually harmful to this.