Good ideas absolutely do die all the time even in open source. If the original dev doesn’t want to play nice, it’s actually pretty difficult to create a new fork that everyone will agree on. Hopefully these federated apps have enough inertia to prevent the userbase from splintering when the original devs move on.

Yup, I say it in every thread of this sort I see pop up, you definitionally can’t force organic engagement.

The apps are fine, it’s content quality and quantity which can only happen organically. You can’t force an increase in quantity and keep quality high. Plus the fediverse is a fairly new concept with new issues that arise as it scales up. By it’s very nature the fediverse cannot react and change quickly so a slow growth allows for communities to try their own solutions and eventually settle on a more universal fix.