* I don't think that they are outsourcing the coding to Pivotal. I got the impression that Pivotal liked their idea and offerend to give (rent?) them office space and monitors and give (probably not for money) them some high-level guidance on how to manage the project and the major implementation details. I didn't really get the impression that Pivotal was writing code for them, save maybe "can you help me with this bug?" or the like. If anyone knows that I'm wrong, please correct me.
* I agree that Diaspora is almost certainly not going to topple Facebook. I think what they meant when they said they'd probably succeed is that they'd probably meet the deadlines they have set for themselves and have a product to release at the end of summer that does all the major things they were planning to have it do.
* If Diaspora does have any chance of catching on (beyond "catching on" in the Quroa sense where a whole bunch of tech-savvy people from the Valley use it and not too many others do), I think some kind of "DiasporaHub" site will have to come around. Someone that basically says "for free, we'll host you a Diaspora node with a forked version of Diaspora that's only different in that there are ads on the side. We promise never to access your data or otherwise violate your privacy." If some viable free option comes along, it would at least have some chance.
* I highly doubt that every single Facebook employee can code.