So you could theoretically either fork it and use it as a good starting point, or (even better) contribute the ideas you have straight into Tangled itself! :)
The infrastructure to host the forges is still a problem yes, but PDSes are VERY trivial to run, they’re just a Node.js app and they have a Compose file to make running it a quick shell script to run. And they will always be free, Bluesky is well aware that making access to the platform a paid thing would kill the project outright, and even then the code is open source and in the process of being written up as an RFC, so… please fact check your comments before posting :)
Regardless that increases the barrier to entry for the median developer compared to e.g. Github. In any case, there are several other providers for PDSs coming up and infra is one of the hot areas in the atproto community
I've been working on an atproto side project. These are very much reasonable considerations when dealing in any atproto application. It is truthful to say that most BlueSky users do not use a personal PDS. It is reasonable to say Tangled will likely trend the same way. It is reasonable to say these are things anyone building on atproto must account for.
It's also factual to say that Tangled is substantially different from BlueSky. Their AppView is stateful, they synchronize via NATS, and PDSs are linked beyond that. Again, substantially more complex than your average atproto architecture.
