FAQ: Why not use hometown, glitch-soc, or another Mastodon fork?
I do like the ideas that some forks bring (an instance-only sharing level, improved support for longform content, Markdown, etc.), and I have given some thought to using Hometown and glitch-soc in particular.
It does look like migration from Mastodon to Hometown is relatively straightforward. Same with glitch-soc.
But as the person ultimately responsible for keeping a2mi.social running, reliable, secure, and up-to-date, I have some concerns:
Longevity of the fork.
Hometown is, as I understand, maintained by effectively one person, vs. Mastodon which has a core team and various contributors. What happens if/when Hometown's sole maintainer stops maintaining it, voluntarily or otherwise?
I know less about glitch-soc, but the same concern applies.
If/when necessary (eg. because Hometown isn't keeping up with Mastodon security patches), is migrating back to plain old Mastodon possible? I don't want a2mi to end up stuck on an outdated or insecure fork with no (easy and clean) way back.
There is a Hometown issue about supporting migration back to plain old Mastodon, but this reverse migration is not straightforward right now.
For glitch-soc, a reverse migration will expose local-only posts to the fediverse, which clearly is unacceptable.
Security, reliability, and scalability with age. As these forks age, merging changes from upstream Mastodon will likely get more difficult, allowing room for bugs to sneak in.
Documentation, particularly around upgrading to new releases. Mastodon provides excellent documentation on migrating to new releases, and I don't know if these forks provide similar docs. (They might, I just haven't checked.)
I'd also, of course, want to gather some feedback from the community about it before making the switch (though the feedback I have received has been, generally, moderately positive).
— Chris (your friendly site admin), Feb. 2024