This is right. The Fediverse and Mastodon aren't products. As the most widespread implementation of ActivityPub (and AGPL'ed to boot), Mastodon, like WordPress and the Linux kernel before it, is more like a force of nature.
It's something that more and more people will adopt over time because it's free and "good enough" for some use cases. A fraction of those who adopt it will contribute to it and it will improve. The longer this virtuous cycle continues the harder it is to stop. Over several decades it will commoditize a chunk of a technology layer that's currently proprietary (basically, the social graph). Maybe a huge chunk of it.
Again just like Linux and WordPress - there will be lots of of critics and naysaying from people who don't understand the economics of the software industry (or in some cases simply don't want to). They will be wrong, again. They will moan about it for many years after it has become successful. History repeats.