That June, control of the StatusNet software was handed over to the GNU Project, one of the oldest collectives of FOSS developers. There it became GNU Social. Without Identi.ca as a central hub, the number of instances expanded and decentralization was realized. I started getting involved a few years after this change; I tried out GNU social as part of a broader effort to open-source my life, and I found quite a lot of people also involved in open-source.