Hi j12t,
You’re right that we need to do a better job of explaining where we diverge from other efforts. We have taken elements from other projects-- we have definitely built on the work of people who came before. An example of this is our use of ActivityPub schemas as the starting point for how we represent a variety of data in the DSNP protocol. But yeah, more to come as we put some more effort into explaining design decisions for people like you!
Thanks again for asking. It is very useful to have these questions. They help us see where we need to improve the docs.
James