My biggest disappointment with their execution is that they made pretty much zero apparent effort to coordinate with any of the other federated social networking projects, of which there are many. Had they done that, and from early on — or at least built things in a way to make that easy, and proactively worked with projects as they appeared — everyone could have leveraged the network effects of all those networks, and they probably wouldn't be handing their rewrite off to the public while they move on to bigger and better today.

Yes, they support OmniAuth and Salmon, but integrating with another platform is someone else's responsibility. Maybe I'm wrong (I actually hope I am), but that feels to me more like wanting Diaspora, itself, to succeed, and not federated social networking in general. To an extent, that's to be expected; we all want to succeed at what we're doing. But particularly in something like federated social networking, the rising tide of interoperability lifts all boats much more quickly than everyone else having to dredge channels into your little estuary. Yes, that isn't quite a walled garden, but it's a lot closer than the rhetoric they slung to sell the project would suggest.

I'm also a little concerned for how much their lack of success might have hindered other software projects from being successful at funding themselves via sites like Kickstarter, but that's much better addressed in the other comments in this thread, so I'll leave it at that.

Those aren't my only complaints, but, again, they've all been addressed, and far better than I have time for or interest in rehashing, else-thread.

Yes, my tone was harsh. But Diaspora left a very bad taste in my, and many others' mouths. However unkind my tone may have been, I genuinely don't think some degree of derision is unwarranted. Net, I honestly think the project did more damage to the cause of federated social networking than it did good. Sure, they put the idea that it was possible in a lot of peoples' heads. And then they demonstrated that it probably can't be done, because if a bunch of whiz-kids (whom the public can't distinguish from Zuck, except that Zuck was successful) with hundreds of thousands of dollars behind them can't pull it off, then who can?

The thing is, I don't agree with your characterization of their competence. Yes, they're probably all very smart people, and I'm sure they've learned a great deal over the past couple years. Being smart is not the same as being competent, however. They were utterly unprepared for what they asked the world to pay them to do. I'm generally in favor of diving in headfirst and trying to learn to swim, but not on someone else's — let alone thousands of unsophisticated (at least in terms of investing in technology projects) people's – dime. That's not competence, in my book. It's irresponsibility.

EDIT: For the record, I agree with you that my comment is characteristic of a growing negativity on HN. I'm actually genuinely saddened that it's the highest-rated thing I've ever said here. It was intended to be a glib, throw-away comment, and was admittedly laden with snark. I stand by my position, though, however much my delivery might have warranted some softening.