Aral Balkan
Co-founder of Twitter joins new Mastodon board of directors. Right, so federating with Threads wasn’t a mistake. This is just the direction Mastodon is going. Oh, well. Another Mozilla emerges.
https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2024/04/mastodon-forms-new-u.s.-non-profit/
Old Man in the Shoe
@aral it's up to servers to federate... threads stole the code, what can you do except block them... not mastodon's fault
Aral Balkan
@jenzi Threads didn’t steal anything. ActivityPub is an open standard. And Mastodon’s extensions to it are also free for anyone to implement.
And what you do is you defederate.
Instead of rolling out the red carpet, which is what actually happened.
Aral Balkan
@RosePuckey They created a new US not-for-profit. Let’s see if it becomes a Mozilla-like not-for-profit that owns a for-profit next.
Rose Puckey 🏴🏳️🌈🇪🇺
@aral Mastodon has a board of directors? How?
Srijit Kumar Bhadra
@aral@mastodon.ar.al
This is good news.
It would have been nice if the blog shared the Mastodon accounts of all the Board of Directors.
#Mastodon #Fediverse
Aral Balkan
@srijit Well, yeah, I guess Jack Dorsey was sadly unavailable and Elon’s busy too these days, so Biz it is. 🤷♂️
FinchHaven sfba
"what on earth makes you say they are raking in shit tons of money?"
Apparently you haven't been paying any attention
"Thank you Sujitech"
"Today we would like to thank Sujitech for kindly donating $100k USD to Mastodon, by far the largest single donation to our non-profit so far."
$100,000.00 USD
For what?
To pay "two full-time developers" $50,000 USD annually?
Dream on...
And this is one "donation" only
What is #Gargron raking in on his line of plushies and other bling?
https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2023/11/thank-you-sujitech/
Merch: https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2023/07/new-merchandise/
cc @aral
Aral Balkan
@FinchHaven @vetehinen They’ve also received $100K each from Jeff Atwood and Mozilla according to their latest blog post. Not-for-profits are allowed to accept donations. It’s kind of a core thing.
(My issue is with who they’re listening to and being guided by, who they’re accepting donations from, who they are aligning themselves with, and the success criteria they’re adopting.)
FinchHaven sfba
And this is interesting, from our boy #Gargron:
"We’ve always been worried that developing Free and Open Source Software would not be recognized as a charitable cause by the German tax system, so we were glad when the tax office originally approved our non-profit status in 2021. But now we have received a notice from the same tax office that our non-profit status has been withdrawn. This came with no advance warning or explanation."
Apparently chanting "free and open, free and open, free and open" while raking in sh1t-t0ns of money didn't fool the German tax authorities
So move to the United States, where the tax system and the IRS are deliberately intended to benefit the rich
Got it....
https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2024/04/mastodon-forms-new-u.s.-non-profit/
vetehinen
@FinchHaven@sfba.social @aral@mastodon.ar.al what on earth makes you say they are raking in shit tons of money? That doesn't sound too likely for a team with the grand total of two full-time deveopers (to be increased to three now) so do you have something to back that with?
Aral Balkan
@jenzi I have no idea what you’re on about. But I also have no more time to waste with this.
Old Man in the Shoe
@aral You're still blaming software and standards and not servers
✨buff dog himbo✨
@MisterMoo @aral @RosePuckey christ have people never heard of things like "pattern recognition," "history repeating itself," or just the completely reasonable act of "making predictions based on real-world events"???
The overall trend with the FOSS world lately has fucking sucked. Org after org is gradually falling into the same predatory, money-grubbing, privacy-invading, user-exploiting bullshit the big companies do. Supposedly "for survival." People are rational to be sick of it.
Mister Moo 🐮
@aral @RosePuckey Your earlier declarative statement that "another Mozilla emerges" makes it hard to believe you've done anything but make up your mind already.
✨buff dog himbo✨
@MisterMoo @aral @RosePuckey there are ZERO REASONS to give any tech company the benefit of the doubt in the current climate. Every sus move a FOSS org makes that looks like the same enshittification we've seen over the last 20 years has a crowd of breathless goobers saying "what makes you so SURE?? Nothing's happened YET!! It could be different, YOU'RE ruining everything with your CYNICISM!!"
How fucking gullible can you be? How many times do they have to do this before people get it?
Aral Balkan
@Nitrousoxide *sigh*
Nitrousoxide
@aral what? This seems fine to me? The code is still open. Anyone can contribute. You can still spin up a new instance of you want. What is bad about this?
ninavizz
@aral How else do you believe the folks behind Mastodon could get paid livable wages? As it stands today, they each make very little; and can't even afford non-profit rates for open positions. Biz can at least attract SV donors, which is where so much capital is otherwise being burned by enshittified shit.
Aral Balkan
@ninavizz Yep, Biz can attract Silicon Valley money. And Silicon Valley money comes with Silicon Valley expectations and goes to entities compatible with Silicon Valley goals.
How else? Many ways. Sadly – and all too predictably – the EU dropped the ball by not funding it properly and stipulating its own demands to forestall corporate capture.
But are there other ways? Yes. Are there other ways if you’re chasing growth über alles? Probably not.
ninavizz
@aral We briefly chatted about this, though. There really isn't, today—and considering Eugen supports himself, another adult, and two pets, it's not right to expect him and his family to personally take the hit for today's scant funding for public interest tech. Mastodon would at least need a full-time development director, and even then there's barely enough. Barely. TorProject and many others subsist on USAID & the US Dept of Defense. Our community needs better.
Aral Balkan
@ninavizz Indeed. We’re living this ourselves and have been for the past however many years. I had to sell two family homes to stay independent. Laura contracts with the mainstream so we have a roof over our heads as I work on the free/open stuff. This is why I spoke at the parliament about how we must fund tech from the commons (https://ar.al/2019/11/29/the-future-of-internet-regulation-at-the-european-parliament/). And this is why I’m building Domain so that it can be sustainable in this current (shit) system. But you must also limit growth.
Aral Balkan
@ninavizz Of one instance and one org, yes. Of the protocol and platform, no.
ninavizz
@aral Do we really want the growth limited of the primary federated platform functioning as the world's Shitter replacement? I honestly don't see Mastodon going for "unicorn" (blick) growth, but instead to meet community demand. The world does want usable, accessible, and easy to access social platforms; and this is truly the only one with a reasonable entry curve. Discord is ok, too; but Matrix, too hard. Most others, also too obscure or hard.
ninavizz
@aral I guess that's where I disagree. Non-nrrds and folks leaving proprietary/for-profit media need the "gateway-friendly" mastodon.social instance and experience, imho, to learn about the fediverse and to feel emboldened enough to take the next step(s). To really force the failure of for-profit tech, a much more massive migration has to happen; and (almost) anything possible, I want to support.
Aral Balkan
@ninavizz Well, now that Threads is federating, they don’t even need that, they can just use Threads. I guess time will tell where things go but I wish we could learn from the mistakes of the past. Regardless, I should start caring far less about what Mastodon is doing and focus on the alternative I’m working on.
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