Maybe in the future. Currently so few people are using mbin that I doubt it would be any substantial amount. It also creates a lot more work when doing your taxes. So yeah if mbin gets a user base like lemmy currently has this would be another story. But it does not and it does not look like we will be there any time soon
My opinion: I do not want to get paid to develop mbin. That creates an obligation and turns it into something like a job. I already have a job and intend to keep it, additionally I don't want to take the fun out of developing mbin. To commit to it full time or apply for grants or anything would currently be a big mistake I think
That was the message that was pushed out when @melroy@kbin.melroy.org started the fork, because a lot of people were not particularly fond of the way he did it. We were trash talked a lot in the first months and obviously (and sadly) that kinda stuck on a lot of people.
and relying mostly on Kbin's existing code as its base
This one most certainly not. We actually stopped porting kbin code a few months into the project, because it just was too much work and it was obvious that Ernest didn't want us to. So everything which changed on mbin in the about 8-10 months since, was purely our own work. Of course the basis will always be kbin, but the form will most likely change
We've been keeping the UI mostly as is, because we all like it, however on the backend site of it a lot has changed. The biggest problems kbin had were compatibility wise (federation) and scaling wise. These were the points where we made huge changes. The federation compatibility has improved a lot (yes there is still a lot to do) and scaling/performance has also improved a ton.
The biggest UI changes we made are:
new filter designs that work for threads as well as microblogs
a subscription panel
a usable instance wide modlog
a cake day display
and more stuff that I am forgetting at the moment (it's been a while since I looked at kbin and I am mostly a backend dev)
The backend changes we improved are (imo) more impactful:
(next release) direct messages are federating
(next release) pins federate
deleting users federate
magazine descriptions are federating correctly
mods federate
reports federate
incoming likes are working
the "hot" sort actually makes sense with lemmy content because it also looks at upvotes and not just at boosts
completely redone the hashtag system so it scales at all
completely redone the background worker system so it scales better (partly next release)
And these are only the changes I could think of in 5 minutes. We likely changed a lot more things, which I just forgot.
I actually have that, though I thought that it is not challenging enough. I've had the feeling that I hit the endgame pretty early and that not much is happening 🤔
I am on linux and I think it is not working there, though even if it did, I always forget to cancel those kinda subscriptions, so it'd not really an option for me... Though great tip for others
I absolutely see the problem, but making users host their own server to host their actor profile and posts is just too complicated. I mean why not just host the whole AP server then...
Additionally it reminded me a lot of Activity Pods
Give it a thumbs up so we know what to prioritize 😊
I've been focusing on the backend and federation stuff. But I promise that we will implement it this year :)