It's not as clean a solution as they'd like it to be, but for another option, Jellyfin hosts media including books. When I say "not as clean," I mean that you can stream video and music from the server, but it has you download books to read on another device. Last I heard, they were looking to integrate at least a PDF viewer into the interface, though.
On the former, yes, I'm definitely thinking about sustainability in the long term, not the current crisis. It might be too late to fix the current situation, at least in the sense of making it so that current large-instance owners can continue to manage everything alone.
And on the latter, kind of. When it's a job, then people also rely on the income. One of the big problems with most economies in general is that, if someone feels bad about your current job - overwhelmed, depressed, or otherwise stressed - then they're not in a good position to find the next opportunity. They don't want to take more hours out of the day, and that stress shows through on job applications. And someone might want to solve that by paying them less, so that they have other jobs, but that throws it back into the "labor of love" column.
That's why I make a big deal about distributing the work across a group or community. Paid or not (but ideally paid), it's far easier to walk away if the "bus factor" is high enough that the job can afford to lose an individual or two for a few weeks and replace them if they leave permanently.
Granted, I don't run instances of anything yet, but speaking as someone who has been on the Internet for a while, including in moderation capacities...
That's unfortunately not complete or a useful policy proposal, but hopefully those off-the-cuff ideas will spur something more worthwhile.
My half-solution to this has always been to refer to where I'm working in my notes, like a file, method name, and maybe control structure if warranted. I've never needed to take that final step (hence half-solution), but this carries about enough information that someone could hack together a quick program to merge the notes and code in a reasonable way.
While (as I say) I've never specifically needed it, though, at work I've often wanted to do that and take the next step of sifting through version control, the ticketing system, and team chats to pull a complete view of what's been happening around a particular chunk of code. I point that all out, because I think that you're on the right track, however you ultimately solve that problem for yourself.
@jcolag
@lemmy.sdf.org