Metafandom

I may be repeating things other people have already said to you, but I see several "reasons for Dreamwidth". Most of them aren't related to fandom at all, but general blogging, and are because this is a code fork, not a clone, and it's being actively developed.

There is integration with OpenID, which is important for people using other blogging platforms. There is the ability for all users (not just paid users) to create feeds, which is similarly useful. There are higher limits on posts, which is just as useful for people wanting to post essays or get into detailed debates as it is for people writing fanfiction. There is an import tool which is useful for backups. There will soon be the ability to read locked posts across sites, which will enable me to keep in touch more easily with the friends who moved to IJ. There is also a welcoming attitude towards new developers, which I have not found at any other Open Source project I have looked at. As a fairly new programmer who is keen on Open Source, that is a big draw for me. There is also the split of subscribe/access, which is useful for me to follow blogs I like without having to give them access to my private life. I could do this with filters before, but the new way is much easier. Most of these are incremental changes, rather than the huge change from Usenet, bulletin boards or mailing lists, but taken together, they are enough for my primary site / feeling of "home" to move, though I will still keep up with the old one, just as I still keep up with my mailing lists.

I also haven't seen any claims by Dreamwidth that they will "protect" anything other than US law. I have seen a claim that they will stick to US law rather than an ignorant paranoid guess at it, but that is rather different.