I think people fear a problematic "BDFL". On the other hand, the beauty of FOSS is that it can be forked in case you don't agree with the current owners.

I heard that Lemmy is the second most popular software on the Fediverse, and choosing between Lemmy and kbin doesn't have much impact due to the interop (although I hope to see tools for easy migration, if needed). What matters is how well the instance is maintained, and the community.

The lemmy.ml instance has some controversies regarding its maintainers, which may have an impact on adopters. programming.dev seems safer for now, for programming communities; I just hope that it's a well-maintained instance.

👋 I hope this will take off