That really is not a satisfying answer. It is incredibly nebulous and even if it did have a nice definition I guarantee most software developers will tell you a lot of software rarely reaches that state.
I can see why they might want to avoid 1000 GitHub issues bike shedding things but they could open source the code and just not have open contribution
Sometimes you’re ashamed of the ugly hacks you cobbled together to reach MVP, and you want to fix the stuff you know you need to fix first before being thrown to the wolves. I can respect that, for a limited time.
Which I think dansup should deserve our trust on this for quite a long time for doing. It isn't empty promises if they already made Pixelfed and opensourced it.
Like.. I suppose it could be a grift, anything could but I see no reason to question their goals or motives.
Zero trust means there’s no trust assumed on the protocol - I.e. it distrusts all actors and the protocol takes steps to work in that trustless environment. I don’t know how that applies specifically to matrix.