One of the problems with self hosting (other than the question of archiving I recently posed) is that it leads to alienation. “Mine! Mine! Host your own!” When in fact I would love to have small groups of people share. Not many of us, to be sure. Ten or twenty at most. Where everybody can be heard without us paying the cost of #consensus democracy. The price is real, sadly. The German Wikipedia article is better than the English one in explaining, I’m afraid: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konsensdemokratie
Small cooperations running servers and services for their members should have limits and procedures in place that make sure the coop can and will split amiably when the threshold is reached and that means before we all get pissed at each other.
So, the freedom to fork is *part* of an exit strategy, but it only applies to the code.
There's "when will we end this" and "how will we end this".
If there's an answer already established for the second question, one can focus more on making the best decisions to answer the first question. Less risk, less angst, less posturing.
@deejoe I’m not sure if use the word „fork” for the splitting of a community but otherwise I agree. When and how to end is best known beforehand.
@kensanata This is part of why I moved to @ajroach42 's instance and stopped hosting my own. Though I can't say I've helped in any way yet. Hey, Andrew, you should set up a separate Patreon or LiberaPay for the instance or something!