I’d bet that they symlinked /ubuntu to the server’s home root - probably for continuity with some previous file structure. It sure looks silly, but I’m sure the reasons for doing it were pretty reasonable.

I’ve been there, but over the years I’ve gotten better at avoiding being in this situation.

If you are implementing something for yourself, and merging it back upstream is just a bonus, then by all means jump straight to implementing.

However, it’s emotionally draining to implement something and arrive at something you’re proud of only to have it ignored. So do that legwork upfront. File a feature request, open a discussion, join their dev chat - whatever it is, make sure what you want to do is valued and will be welcomed into the project before you start on it. They might even nudge you in a direction that you hadn’t considered before you started.

Be a responsible dev and communicate before you do the work.

You can substitute “at least 10 years ahead” as stated in the second sentence of the article quoting US senators.

The community-based project of passion to enhance lemmy is already here… it’s lemmy.

This isn’t reddit. There isn’t a big black box and company around the service that is preventing the community from making it what they want it to be.

Sure there can be flavors, but I’d guess if there’s the type of consensus around the usefulness as there is with RES, then why wait for a separate project to shoehorn features on top of lemmy when the folks behind lemmy seem quite receptive to contributions?