So, it is just "release early, release often". So, the code and the spec has been out there for a long time. I mean, some of this stuff is really old. Us geeks have been thinking about decentralized social networking since the dawn of ages, and it seems like the rest of the world is starting to wake up to its necessity too. So, I think the timing is pretty OK now.
Like, Linux didn't come with a well-polished example either... It wasn't even intended to out-do Minix. :-)
I guess you could say that we could say even more clearly that this is a prototype, and we have a roadmap where it will stay a prototype for some time. But we are seeing people finding it interesting that we're actually not trying to engineer something from the ground, we are seeing what kind of impact we can have with pretty well tested Web technologies. I suspect we have a lot less development to do to have a great social impact than you'd have to do if went full P2P.
At the same time, there is a large graveyard out there of failed decentralized social networks, so we are under no illusion that this is going to be easy. It is going to be pretty hard.
Still, I don't see any reason why we should be sub-surface any longer.