I am sometimes considering launching a proper commercial instance, where membership requires a monthly fee. For me, having a well maintained instance is easily worth a few euros per month and it would be an interesting experiment. But I’d much rather have enthusiasts like Milan do their thing and be able to get by.

Consider this: do you want to go back to ad-financed corporate social media? Because that’s what you’ll get when you want your services “for free”. Enthusiasm scales only so far.