The case I want to make today is that having different kinds of service providers other than the PDS should become a completely normal and well facilitated part of the ATProto ecosystem.

I wish I'd linked to this article by Zicklag when it was first written, because it makes an excellent point which can even be generalised a little further; different kinds of ecosystems other than ATProto should become a normal part of the "open social web" ecosystem.

I really dislike these terms "on-protocol" and "off-protocol" that are starting to take hold in the ATProto world. It seems wrong to try to put any one protocol at the centre of them all, except possibly for the shared "identity layer" which everyone seems to agree is a good thing.