>extremely competent and high spirited developers are giving up like this.
I'm pretty sure the median IRC server runs for much less than 7.5 years. I don't think anyone expects volunteers to dedicate decades of their life to admin duty. and it seems fine and healthy for the ecosystem that he is telling people they have a few months to move their bots to a different server.
I didn't read TFA but was there a way to find the migrated bots? honestly, for some quirky reason, the bots are a big chunk of my enjoyment of social media (from Opposum's every hour to randomly generated 3 body simulations of suns in 3d to flight tracking to weather alerts to CO_2 levels), and I have so much enjoyed botsinspace bots since joining mastodon (which is by far the most enjoyable/least addictive/least evil social media I've found).
I'm pretty sure the median IRC server runs for much less than 7.5 years. I don't think anyone expects volunteers to dedicate decades of their life to admin duty. and it seems fine and healthy for the ecosystem that he is telling people they have a few months to move their bots to a different server.