Evan Prodromou
So, a quick comment on VC-funded companies with products in the fediverse.
My company, StatusNet, was venture funded. I don't know how we could have run identi.ca for so long for so many people without that funding.
I think it's hard to get a 10x return in markets where open standards prevail. But I'm happy to see people try.
As long as the fediverse remains diverse and competitive, and community, coop and family servers have a place, I'm not opposed to commercial companies participating.
Evan Prodromou
That all said, I 100% support people using the power of defederation whenever and however they see fit.
Your freedom to decide who you want to associate with on this network is fundamental.
Chris Trottier
@evan It’s hard to do anything without funding.
Despite this, people get pissed off when the reality is stated bluntly.
Many people get upset when I tell them that Mastodon and community admins require a way to fund their ventures. But people need to feed their families.
Evan Prodromou
@atomicpoet I'm really, really excited about cooperative models. I think we're moving in the right direction there.
Evan Prodromou
Also, I totally think @timbray makes good points. We're pretty close on this, but not quite in agreement. Which is OK!
Evan Prodromou
@McNeely At the time, Open Source startups were getting a lot of funding, so it seemed like a good choice for us.
McNeely
@evan for a company building out standards what was the appeal of venture funding compared to other funding methods? I think it's the "expectation" of massive returns that is the massive turnoff (at least to me)
Evan Prodromou
@McNeely it's also worth noting that crowdfunding really hadn't taken off yet. Diaspora* had the biggest Kickstarter to date when it started - $200K - a couple of years after I founded StatusNet.
Evan Prodromou
clacke
Evan Prodromou
@McNeely I think I already answered your question, though. Is there something else you need to know?
McNeely
@evan mostly I suppose I'm wondering what the benefit of VC funding vs something like a traditional business loan. I imagine there's less FINANCIAL risk in VC money at the expense of other potential influences.
This was all in the early 2010s right? I'm sure the environment has changed a lot since when too.
Evan Prodromou
@monnier well said!
Stefan Monnier
@evan: I don't know how to avoid the centralization that plagues email, but I think a crucial element is for the Free Software community to develop tools to make it easy to run an instance without sysadmin experience.
We can't hope to reach the convenience of something that someone else maintains (i.e. "register and then use blissfully unaware for the next 20 years"), but we need to aim to get as close as possible.
Currently we have tolerable answers for "setup your own instance", but we need to deal with hardware failures, DoS attacks, regular upgrades, moving on to a new software when the old one is discontinued, managing quotas, new registrations, payment, ...
FreedomBox is a good step in that direction, but it still mostly focuses on setup and upgrades, with no good answers for how to deal with the nastier parts: it's easy to find some free time to get started, but you don't get to choose when hardware fails and your users will get angry quickly if doesn't get fixed *very* soon.
GNU social JP is a social network, courtesy of GNU social JP管理人. It runs on GNU social, version 2.0.2-dev, available under the GNU Affero General Public License.
All GNU social JP content and data are available under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license.