people running their own X is a solution (or means) to a problem, not the problem (or ends) itself. The issue is control.

The problem is lock in. Running proprietary software still has the problem, even on your own hardware. The idea is to have everything run to spec/protocol, with mechanisms preventing customised behaviour - the issue is similar to the problems within bit-torrent wrt custom clients not behaving correct i.e. not maintaining ratio, which meant there needed to be a decentralised mechanism for managing this across-network.

The idea is it doesn't matter so much who runs the software or what they run - the network protocol maintains the peace.