lemmy.world already does this with opencollective: https://opencollective.com/mastodonworld
this post was submitted on 03 Jul 2023
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Wish the donations were tax deductible. Would donate more.
Love that, I will be implementing the same.
The expense descriptions are very disappointing, they’re so vague and don’t actually explain what the money is spent on
Does this also include Patreon funds?
that link is only for expenses via opencollective, they have more detailed breakdowns (obviously not accountant-level stuff) on their blog: https://blog.mastodon.world/
Awesome thanks! All this stuff should really be pulled together and made available in one place, hopefully there are plans - communication and transparency are key, I think!
You're really helping a lot of people, it's awesome.
Totally agree! Some kind of ledger on what money comes in and where it goes out would be good. The more automation the better so we don't have to rely on a human element to update it and raise the risk of misinformation.
Yeh. I don’t even mind big staff spends. But the concept of being open book, goes well with an open sourced, decentralised platform.
Anything that ensures honesty and transparency is good in the long term IMO
I completely agree. It would be fantastic to see instances, both big and small, openly donating to the source code developers. Knowing the percentage of their income that goes towards this would also bring a welcomed layer of transparency.
Am I the only one who think they can use the money as they please? Just do crack and prostitutes, who cares. Instances are not controlling anything, why it matters? Just keep source code open and if you are too high on drugs someone else can take over and people can jump to another instance. Just complete the tools to perform instance to instance migration.
FOSS is not normal corporate world, were you have to be scared of the people running the show.
Edit: just to make sure that single instance doesnt get too much power. I.e. meta joining can be problem. If no single entity has enough power to control the whole show, then users are in power.
I think you raise a very valuable topic.
Obviously it's going to be up to each Instance owner, but that cuts both ways. While we could never get every owner to participate, particularly any that aspire to being businesses as opposed to public services, some certainly should be willing to submit some basic financials.
These Instance owners would certainly gain trust and goodwill from their users for doing so. Though how you prevent fraud I have no idea. We're not exactly the FTC here, we don't really have investigators that can verify submitted information.
It's not a big deal but I personally don't agree. If I'm using an instance and I appreciate their work I donate money to them. There is nothing wrong with them making a profit or even a living off the site if I enjoy it and it guarantees it's maintenance and upkeep.
The harsh reality is that Reddit users created the situation to a degree over there. Any attempts Reddit made to try to make a profit were basically shot down.
Any kind of public ledger is going to do is open up every fucking person's judgment as to how the money is being spent. Even if you just have 5,000 users there's no way you're going to get any two retards to actually agree what's appropriate and how do we ever decide what their compensation for their time should be? Is that up to us to say?
If you like the site just donate it. It's no different than giving money to a homeless person. It ain't your job to decide how they want to spend it. If you want to give them a meal then give them a meal but if you want to give them five bucks then don't give a shit whether they go by a bottle of liquor or a sandwich. Just do your good deed and move on...
A well-made instance should charge an annual per user fee and I don't give a shit what they do with it as long as I feel like the site is being developed and maintained well.
I agree transparency is a good thing in this space.
There are already services that allow for some level of transparency in terms of how donations are spend, like https://opencollective.com
But perhaps there are others that provide similar tools?
Yeh. A couple of people have posted that. It’s what I would use.
Also, It would be fantastic to see instances, both big and small, openly donating to the source code developers. Knowing the percentage of their income that goes towards this would also bring a welcomed layer of transparency.