Budgeting & Expense Approval
Mayel de Borniol PublicSeen by 14Thanks to our generous members, we have $159 currently available, and an estimated annual budget of $732 (not including any new members who join in the future).
Our first ever expense was the domain name (at $85), which will have to be renewed annually.
I am proposing that our second fixed expense be to pay for the server. (I have been covering the costs until now).
I've recently upgraded the server so we doubled the resources, to 4GB RAM, 100GB SSD storage, and 4 CPU cores. This is a VPS with unlimited traffic (at 200Mbit/s) hosted in a datacenter in Amsterdam, at $13 per month.
Of course, with more members and more usage, we will gradually need to add more resources.
It would also be interesting to discuss what everyone thinks the budget should be spent on, in order of priority. Some things that have been brought up before include donations to support developers of the open-source tools we use (Mastodon and Loomio to start), and some fair remuneration for labor done by members.
How should we allocate our budget?
dot vote by Mayel de Borniol Closed Sun 18 Jun 2017 8:02PM
Give more dots to what you think is higher priority
Results
| Results | Option | % of points | Points | Mean | Voters | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Server | 26 | 57 | 8 | 7 | |||
| Domain name | 17 | 38 | 5 | 7 | |||
| Tech labor (eg. server maintenance) | 13 | 29 | 4 | 7 | |||
| Moderation labor (eg. rebuking a troll) | 12 | 27 | 4 | 7 | |||
| Donations to Mastodon devs | 10 | 22 | 3 | 7 | |||
| Membership labor (eg. onboarding new members) | 8 | 18 | 3 | 7 | |||
| Governance labor (eg. editing bylaws) | 7 | 16 | 2 | 7 | |||
| Donations to Loomio | 6 | 13 | 2 | 7 | |||
| Not voted | 0 | 0 | 13 |
| 12 - Server | |
| 8 - Donations to Mastodon devs | |
| 2 - Moderation labor (eg. rebuking a troll) | |
| 2 - Tech labor (eg. server maintenance) | |
| 2 - Donations to Loomio | |
| 2 - Domain name | |
| 2 - Membership labor (eg. onboarding new members) | |
| 2 - Governance labor (eg. editing bylaws) | |
other potential budget areas: marketing, instance enhancements (e.g. logo, graphical design, custom development), donation refunds (if budget excess)
Ok for allocating $13 per month for server?
proposal by Mayel de Borniol Closed Sat 17 Jun 2017 8:02PM
With the first expense (payed out from OpenCollective) covering 6 months (June to November 2017, inclusive) for a total of $78. And if we need extra resources before the end of this period, make a new expense for the difference.
Results
| Results | Option | Votes | % of votes cast | % of eligible voters | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Agree | 6 | 100 | 29 |       | |
| Abstain | 0 | 0 | 0 | ||
| Disagree | 0 | 0 | 0 | ||
| Block | 0 | 0 | 0 | ||
| Not voted | 15 | 71 |             |
I understand all the receipts will be posted to opencollective.
I have the same understanding as Sam.
Give more dots to what you think is higher priority @matthewcropp
For new members who may not be aware, the server is provided by https://CloudVault.me (a small private cloud service I run). It is located in Amsterdam. Any questions please ask, let's maintain transparency in every aspect of our co-op :)
Just out of interest, which provider are we currently renting our server from?
The price looks very good to me, considering a similar capability machine at Digital Ocean costs $40 a month.
@brechtsavelkoul the server is provided by https://CloudVault.me (a small private cloud service I run). It is located in Amsterdam.
@ntnsndr thanks!
Due to the unanimous support, I have approved the $13/month for server expense on OpenCollective. Thanks, all!
@mayel I'm a little confused about how to use this poll. You ask "what order", but the dot poll is weighting, so are we supposed to put more or fewer dots for things we think should be prioritized?