Idk about infinite, if they stop getting updates they will eventually get phased out and if you can’t download the application it’s also dead. All that aside the sun is going to go super nova eventually.
Also a lot of people don’t want to self host. I doubt you self host your own Lemmy instance for instance.
IRC works since decades, same for XMPP. I think that is a pretty strong indication that it will continue to work just fine.
And not everyone needs to self host, like one in a thousand is more than sufficient for a community to have their own self-hosted chat system.
I host my own matrix instance.
I wouldn’t mind hosting my own lemmy instance either, but as it’s a public platform anyway I don’t have the same qualms about using an instance hosted by someone else. So I opted not to take on any more work on that.
Not everyone needs to self host, you might get away with knowing someone who does. And no, I wouldn’t accept a nextcloud account hosted by just anyone, but my siblings and parents happily utilize ones provided by me.
And back when teamspeak, mumble, ventrilo, minecraft servers, cs servers, etc. all had to be “self-hosted” there were plenty of service providers who would do all the technical work for the layman, in exchange for direct payment. Making all those services quite accessible to anyone.
That was so much better than how today we “pay” by getting datamined.
I agree with you here but I wouldn’t want to pay for a host for some FOSS project and I wouldn’t host that on my own IP either.
Why not? How do you expect to realize a fair and good internet, controlled by its users instead of corporations driven by motives far removed from what is in the interest of users, or even humanity as a species?
You still don’t have to, I’ll do it. But someone has to. Would you donate to your own instance?