• rglullis@communick.news
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    2
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    My primary argument against any attempt to keep donations as the main model of funding: everyone talks about the fediverse “being like email”, but we don’t hear of “donation-based” email providers, do we?

    At the end of the day, hosting a Mastodon, Matrix or Lemmy server is work, perhaps even more work than hosting an email service. I don’t think it is fair to try to get service providers to put up these servers online and then try to find a way for them to support themselves. To me this feels like asking a photographer to “work for exposure”. Unfortunately, Big Tech and VC-funded companies flipped this around and convinced users that these services should be all like this, but the reality is that this kills independent software developers and service providers.

    • Haui@discuss.tchncs.de
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      Yes, absolutely. I appreciate your input.

      I do think that it has been a problem before but tech has made it a lot worse.

      In any case, I think we could try new things. Like the first people joining help with funding so that the admin team can grow. Then, when funding is no issue, peeps can come in for free. And those who actually pay for it get a founders badge or whatever. Maybe some extras. Because people who have more and invest more should definitely be recognized, just not with power (plutocracy).

        • Haui@discuss.tchncs.de
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          Makes sense. I thought about doing it the other way round but I thought it would probably stay in the red since peeps then go somewhere else and the early adopters do not necessarily post a lot.

          If you have peeps who are actually invested, it’s different. Say, if you post quality content once a day, it costs nothing, otherwise you have to pay. Or you become an active mod, etc. The actual quality is hard to check but the regularity is automatically provable. Then you take probes once a month and be done with it.

          I do this on a minecraft server and it works good. People have ranks based on playtime that reset every month (regularity), donator ranks and staff ranks. You need to be careful with staff ranks since some sit on them but financially I‘m at least cost neutral. I just reduced the hours I put in so that I don’t burn out while not making any income.

          Its not perfectly applicable but I hope you can see the underlying principle I‘m following.

          • rglullis@communick.news
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            1 year ago

            Yeah, one thing I need to do is to make sure that the people who are coming in for free are not just lurking around. They are not heavy consumers of the service, but the idea is that the first ones should come to help bootstrap the instance content.

            As for what you are doing for your minecraft server, I think it is quite reasonable if you treat it as a hobby. You are not doing it expecting compensation, so at least you should be doing it in a way that you can be healthy and sustainable.