so couchers focus on better UI and new tech? why not join efforts with bewellcome? or are they too "democratic" and not everyone sees new tech and better UI as major improvement?

curious where this new road will lead surfers.

Part of it is the better UI and new tech, but there's a lot more too.

Just on that point though: there's actually another open-source platform called Trustroots. They initally started as a rewrite of the BeWelcome frontend, but because of politics and such, BW never let them merge those big changes, so they spun off. Trustroots is a cool project but I think they swung too far into the realm of anarchism in their vibe both as a platform (they are very hitchhikey, so their moderation model is extremely hands off) and as a project (they have this things called a "do-ocracy"). We think there needs to be some planning and roadmapping and a healthy mix of dev + non-dev, as well as serious moderation to keep the platform safe.