I'm talking about the case where you wanted to run your own PDS and use all of the other infrastructure being run by Bluesky.
If you fully want your own copy of everything, then you'd want to run a copy of everything. But you don't have to. It really depends on what your goals are. That's why the post is about the maximal scenario. "Just your own PDS" is the minimalist scenario. But I think it's the one that makes sense for 95% of users who want to self-host.
Right, and I'm saying "surely there must be a middle ground between "using all of Bluesky's infrastructure" and "having a 4.5tb copy of every post ever made on the network""
If you fully want your own copy of everything, then you'd want to run a copy of everything. But you don't have to. It really depends on what your goals are. That's why the post is about the maximal scenario. "Just your own PDS" is the minimalist scenario. But I think it's the one that makes sense for 95% of users who want to self-host.