> I want Mastodon to have more resources for things like hiring extra developers, UX designers, developing official apps and so on, and I want there to be a clear boundary between fundraising for that cause and my personal income.<p>This is an important step, and one that I'd love to see more FOSS projects take
For those who don't know: Mastodon is like Twitter, except decentralised and open source. Becoming a gGmbH means Eugen is seeking to expand it further.
I wonder if all the hoopla is because mastodon / the fediverse are finally receiving some (deserved) traction? The accounts count does not seem to show a new regime (<a href="https://the-federation.info/" rel="nofollow">https://the-federation.info/</a>) but maybe there are more reliable indicators?<p>In any case, sorting out conflicts of interest, business models, competing visions etc about the fediverse is a task that is still almost 100% for the future, as being niche and unknown does not put much pressure.<p>The issue of a "local or global timeline" is imho but the thin edge of a wedge: the current open source fediverse projects largely emulate the surveillance platforms (indiscriminately copying the good and the bad). That is extremely limiting and ultimately self-defeating. The open source fediverse can, must (and most likely in due course will) redefine the meaning of social platforms so as to undo the damage done by the first generations. Godspeed
Glad to see this important step in securing the future of software that is more than just code.<p>Having been a member of the Fosstodon instance <a href="https://www.fosstodon.org/" rel="nofollow">https://www.fosstodon.org/</a> for six months I expect that many HNers may find it an interesting and engaging instance. It's centred around free/open source software and similar services and is fully of friendly, witty and knowledgeable folk.
That's pretty cool (and also pretty ridiculous that it took 8 months). I'm kinda confused by the last part:<p>> Since both Patreon and our custom sponsorship platform are based around rewards to patrons/sponsors, they cannot be classified as donations, so there are no changes to how those are taxed.<p>So when German non-profits want to hand out merch in exchange for a specific donation amount, non-profit has to pay for-profit taxes on that?
Related discussion: there was recently some move within the community to try and topple the current maintainer. That calls was based on technical/UX disagreements (regarding the local timeline) and on the maintainer allegedly having connection to a surveillance project called Eunomia: <a href="https://seedy.xyz/posts/0005-open-letter/" rel="nofollow">https://seedy.xyz/posts/0005-open-letter/</a><p>I am not a member of the Mastodon community and i have no clue to the veracity of these statements, but i believe they're worth considering in the topic of Mastodon changing governance model.
I really wonder how Bluesky [1] (Twitter's project of project to build a decentralized social media protocol) will take ActivityPub and especially Mastodon into account… Both the W3C and RetroShare have reacted to the news on Twitter [2] but are totally ignored so far.<p>[1] <a href="https://blueskyweb.org/" rel="nofollow">https://blueskyweb.org/</a><p>[2] <a href="https://twitter.com/jack/status/1204766078468911106" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/jack/status/1204766078468911106</a>
Mastodon is an ActivityPub implementation, right? So does that mean Mastodon can interact with other AP implementations? Or do they add some additional stuff that doesn’t interop?
This is the way we defeat stalker capitalists who are trading trinkets to the natives for land. The core functionality of FaceCrook, Twatter and Instaglam doesn't require $billions. The data we pay for these services is worth so much more that the exchange is essentially theft.<p>I have no use for a Twatter replacement, but when a non-profit (or benefit corporation) starts up a viable FaceCrook replacement, I will gladly donate.
This title needs to be disambiguated. I had assumed that most musicians, and especially prog metal bands, were non-profit by default. I was curious why that had to be made explicit!