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   bumblefudge (by_caballero@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 26-Nov-2024 17:17:12 JST bumblefudge

   • Raphael Lullis

   @raphael capitalism is profit-maximization -- thus johannes' apt point that people often donate to or overpay for services they trust not to be profit-maximizing from trustful foundation-like groups of people :D

   • Embed this notice
     Raphael Lullis (raphael@mastodon.communick.com)'s status on Tuesday, 26-Nov-2024 17:17:11 JST Raphael Lullis

     in reply to

     @by_caballero

     I'm all for contributing back to projects (E.g, I pledged to give 20% of Communick's profits to the Fediverse projects), but I am not sure if that could be done *without* market dynamics.

     Like, how can we define "excess revenue"? Should we account the work of instance admins as expenses? What about moderators?

     Who would determine the fair wage for this work, if not via the price discovery mechanism that capitalism can provide?

   • Embed this notice
     bumblefudge (by_caballero@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 26-Nov-2024 17:17:12 JST bumblefudge

     in reply to

     • Raphael Lullis

     @raphael to put it another way, i actually think fediverse and capitalism don't mix, but i'd still pay 100/yr for an account on a server that reinvents all its excess revenue in open-source contributions, for example.

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     Raphael Lullis (raphael@mastodon.communick.com)'s status on Tuesday, 26-Nov-2024 18:02:35 JST Raphael Lullis

     in reply to

     @by_caballero

     > You just need to pay something sustainable and acceptable to all parties

     This is quite hand-wavy, no? Who is determining the amount that is "sustainable and acceptable"?

     I honestly don't buy this idea that developers should accept less pay because working on FOSS is cool or noble. If we want to compete with Threads and Bluesky, this also means that we need to pay developers well.

   • Embed this notice
     bumblefudge (by_caballero@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 26-Nov-2024 18:02:36 JST bumblefudge

     in reply to

     • Raphael Lullis

     @raphael you don't have to throw out the entire market baby with the profit-maximizing backwater, was my point. if all labor is paid at rates transparent and public you don't need to pay "market rates", you just need to pay something sustainable and acceptable to all parties, ideally decided transparently and updated over time in a public process. that's not exactly outside of price discovery but it's at least not coupled tightly to it.