At first I kinda found the idea of an Aether Pro (and I'd go so far as to say using the "Pro" moniker is rather misleading as it's kind of an entirely different

At first I kinda found the idea of an Aether Pro (and I'd go so far as to say using the "Pro" moniker is rather misleading as it's kind of an entirely different product altogether!) existing kinda iffy, but after reading up what it truly was I think it makes sense to have something similar to that and avoid many common pitfalls when it comes to securing funding for an open source project, so kudos for that! I do think both decentralized and federated platforms can coexist just fine. They serve slightly different needs and both provide alternatives to the centralized platforms that pervade the Internet these days.