They’re both built on ActivityPub and look very similar, but Kbin is talked about like an alternative to Lemmy instead of an instance of it. Is it a fork? Why is it better or worse?
I’m not sure that should really matter much though. Lemmy is federated, open-source, and makes zero revenue. It’s not like the developer has much control over instances other than his own or even the code it runs on, ultimately.
It’s not super surprising that communists would be drawn to the fediverse’s design philosophy and while I might think he’s misguided politically the software isn’t really his at the end of the day, even if he is the lead maintainer.
It’s not the same issue as closed platforms have like Facebook+Zuckerberg or Reddit+Spez. If he starts messing with the project the community can take it and leave.
Not only that but the design encourages that the majority of the community not be on the instance he controls from the outset.
You’re 100% right and I completely agree with you.
But to play devil’s advocate: people are saying that drawing attention to Lemmy will mean more donations to Lemmy’s dev team, which in turn supports them.
I personally don’t care what the politics are behind a good piece of software. I don’t know Linus Torvalds’ politics; I don’t know the politics of the folks behind Mastodon; I don’t know the politics of Jimmy Wales. I can guess, of course, but regardless of their politics they’ve made a good product and that’s found success.