Hello @Mecallie 
Thanks for your contribution to diaspora*.
Do you have a source to support your claim that BountySource is a cash grab? By source, a mean a link to a both independent & without conflict of interest source. Which in turn can be publicly review by all.
https://liberapay.com is my favorite option for fundraising. It’s also itself open source. Liberapay has strong privacy & security. Because its code can be review and contributed to by all
I do not have a single independent source with a good motivation for it. I simply tried a search engine and typed “BountySource dead?”. The hits I got lead me to believe it is not what it used to be to say the least. It’s just my opinion, I can very well be wrong just like those posters I found with the search
It’s been a while, any developments or even thoughts on groups for *diaspora?
I still think they’d be interesting and useful for many. I’d push for an instance local version of groups with anything federatable being a stretch goal.
Lots of people would like groups. The bottom line is: one of those people needs to create it.
So on projects like this the developers add what they want and if the (potential) users of the software would like a different feature they have to become a developer themselves? I have a full-time job, and do not have time to go to night school to become a developer and add this. Sorry. I was willing to offer a small incentive but do not have the money to pay a full wage or anything like that.
I would say the development team could prioritize if there is a great need for a feature? I fully understand that if you are a dev you like to work on what you want or think needs fixing. In my opinion that is one of the reasons foss is still not embraced everywhere. The focus is usually more on the people developing it (and using it for themselves) then on trying to grow a large user base. Which is to bad because I really think the world needs to decentralize and open up.
In the mean time I have gone with Hubzilla. I simply cannot offer the users that asked for a FB alternative anything that does not involve groups. Groups is at the heart of what they are requesting. Hubzilla at least has something that can be used as such, although it is a lot harder to understand for the users.
I’ll keep an eye out, who knows: maybe some user will go to night school and add this feature
Guess what, I (and other diaspora developers) have a full-time job too. But other people still demand that I develop the features they want instead of doing what I want to do myself in my free time?
And if I then develop something a few people wanted, there are 10 other people who ask why feature x or y or z is still not done and why I didn’t do that feature they think is obviously more important … so you can never do it right anyway, whatever you do, it was the wrong feature you did.
That’s why when I do something for diaspora I do what I want to do myself and what is fun for me. And if you really want a specific feature to happen, the best and fastest way is just to do it yourself (that’s also how I started developing for diaspora and suddenly the things I always complained about were done, it’s like magic, when you stop complaining and actually do stuff, stuff gets done 
). And then if you start developing the features you think are important, you can also enjoy all the other people complaining you should have done something else instead.
Or if you found something else that does what you want, then it’s also fine to just use that. I’m not forcing anybody to use diaspora if it doesn’t fit their needs.