Mastodon announces new European non-profit, change of CEO
It is more important than ever that the social web is not controlled by corporations. Today, Mastodon is taking another step towards its founding ideals: independence and non-profit ownership. We're transferring ownership of key assets to a new European not-for-profit entity, ensuring our mission re...
What does this mean for John Mastodon's grandkids?
Yes. He is not a an-i-mal.
I feel like you've answered the wrong comment, and this a-ni-mal(? am I saying that right?) refers to someone else
This is a great move. Governance is extremely important for bigger OSS projects, and the "benevolent dictator" model has its limits.
We need to grow our annual operating budget to €5 million in 2025.
What for?
How many active users are going to be served by mastodon.social and mastodon.online? Is the infrastructure being provided by the companies counted as part of this budget?
How many more users are going to join the Mastodon network of servers thanks to the missing features that are planned to be released this year?
there's a big difference between running a service on volunteers, and having full-time folks to keep things running / answer the regulation discussions / keep maintaining / keep adding the features that folks are looking for.
They are also the main developers of the Mastodon software. It is not just hosting the service. The software needs to be able to compete with Bluesky and right now it quite simply does not. The only way to get the quality needed is to have some full time lead developers. Also they need some proper admins to run the websites. Mastodon social is at 250,000 active users right now, but it is also fairly likely to grow fast with what Elon is up to with Twitter. Just to compare Twitter used to have 7500 employees, with a 1000 today.
The software needs to be able to compete with Bluesky and right now it quite simply does not.
Mastodon has a 5 year headstart over Bluesky. Bluesky has more users, large players already getting into it and is raising money and is not ashamed to to be actively looking for a business model.
Meanwhile, Mastodon completely blew the opportunity it got when Musk bought Twitter and keeps repeating the same mistake of preaching to the converted.
What makes you think that more money would solve it? Their problem is not a lack of money, but a lack of ambition.
Surprised to see you of all people question why a project needs money to pay for things.
What for?
They said what for in the previous section, improving Mastodon's "usability, discoverability, and trust & safety". They tried to fundraise for a head of trust and safety last month, but failed. My impression is this is them trying to raise general donations to the project to pay for things like this, instead of individual campaigns for individual things.
Is the infrastructure being provided by the companies counted as part of this budget?
I thinks so, given the previous paragraph links to their sponsor page and says as such.
Surprised to see you of all people question why a project needs money to pay for things
I am not questioning the need for money. I am questioning the amount.
And yes, the reason I am asking this is precisely because I don't believe the "not-for-profit" leads to better outcomes than any for-profit one, and I do not share the belief that all for-profit endeavors are bad.
To illustrate the point: I'd take good old Craigslist making more than $600 million per year as a tool against Big Tech and unethical corporations than any of these feel-good initiatives from Mastodon.
They tried to fundraise for a head of trust and safety last month, but failed.
People aren't going to donate for unimportant things.
it's not (only) for the instance. This is for paying full time jobs to manage and develop the software
I know. The second question is meant to cover this...
The existing US-based non-profit entity, the 501(c)(3), will continue to function as a fundraising hub.
Wait, is the money transferred to the US then back to the EU? And will the US-based non-profit still continue to exist or will it be replaced by a truly European one?
The 501(c(3) is a fundraising entity, and will continue to exist. There will be a new independent European non-profit that will "own" (for the want of a better word) the other entities. Legal structures and things are not my forte (IANAL), that's my understanding of what is happening in so far as I'm involved in the discussions and what I'm able to tell you.
No mention of the name Mastodon and copyrights which I seem to recall is one of the bigger complaints
