Fediverse can only win by keeping its ground, by speaking about freedom, morals, ethics, values. By starting open, non-commercial and non-spied discussions. By acknowledging that the goal is not to win. Not to embrace. The goal is to stay a tool. A tool dedicated to offer a place of freedom for connected human beings. Something that no commercial entity will ever offer.
I tend to agree. At some point, open source has to survive attempted corporatization. In the case of multiple large corporations playing in an open-source pool, the GPL functions as a bit of a MAD standoff.
Microsoft’s Internet Explorer was the origin of the term Embrace, Extend and Extend. MS Explorer is long dead, but Firefox persists. Even with Google starting shenanigans with Chrome, I don’t think they can push it that far.
If an open standard is truly open, then I think you have to accept that corporations are going to come and play, and an open source project needs to be ready to deal with it.
My specific concern in this case though is that Meta already dominates social media so thoroughly, and it would be the only large player in ActivityPub. At the very least, there needs to be a robust defence of maintaining an open standard over adjusting to accommodate Meta. Granted, the Linux kernel has survived years of Microsoft being the #1 contributor to kernel development. There’s even been rumblings about corporate representation on the Linux Foundation. All valid criticisms, but Linux keeps delivering.