It is not about the people that already host. It is about enabling many more by giving them an option to buy a path of least resistance. In exchange, it creates a potential revenue source in a completely untapped demographic. The subscription/donations demographic is like a very unique and niche market. The vast majority of people do not exist within that space. Most people do not have the financial stability to engage like this. It is not that they are unable to accumulate adequate funds, it is that their pay fluctuates over time and their baseline constraints are far more stressful than spending from times of surplus and opportunity. Catering only to those with such surplus and gatekeeping the complexity of self hosting is massively limiting adoption.

The rule in managing a chain of retail stores is that, no matter how you select products to stock in stores, it is impossible to only select products that will all sell on one platform. How you manage the overburden always determines your long term success. You must employ other platforms and demographics to prioritize the mobility of cash flow.

Similarly but inverted, this place has a slice of all demographics. Efforts tailored to the various subsets should tap entirely new potential. A fool imagines they can convert the unstable poor*'r* into a reliable stable income source via donations. Someone like myself has means but not a situation that is compatible. If I have some tangible thing to purchase, I can make that happen. I do not have any subscriptions in life for anything at all. Heck, I won’t even shop on any of my devices I use regularly because I only buy what I intend to go looking to purchase with intent. That is not common, but what is common are spontaneous people that need time to align their finances with their desires. That person is likely to dread paying $5 every month compared to $250 in May when they get a couple thousand dollars on a tax return. Expecting the public to float the stability is stupid. That is not how the real world works. Real businesses always float the overhead. I’m talking about how to free the masses to self host everything for the cost of a nice router spent once with no techno leet filter.