Federated and open alternatives keep getting built

Tangled, a Git collaboration platform on the AT Protocol, relaunched with stabilized lexicons, a rebuilt architecture and UI, and easier self-hosting. A co-founder showed up in the thread, and a user said it is the only forge they want to use because it sits alongside their other atproto social data. Elsewhere, the Signal fork Molly came up because it let users run one account across devices, and a commenter learned that official Signal can now shard one account across two devices, removing Molly's main advantage. An archived thread about Slack closing its IRC and XMPP gateways, and one on blocked VPNs where Mastodon and self-hosted tunnels were recommended, show the same instinct.

The pattern: every time a central platform closes a door or breaks, someone ships a federated version, and the main product often absorbs the best feature. Forks like Molly carry a real maintenance risk as well, since a fork that falls 3 months behind becomes a vulnerability.