Discussion: Expanding Social.Coop to Other Fediverse Services
Fenn Martyn
Public
Seen by 192
Objective
I'd like to hold a discussion about the possibility of social.coop operating more than just a Mastodon server and expanding into other Fediverse services.
I'm primarily interested in a Kbin or Lemmy server run by the cooperative, although in general I would appreciate seeing other services as well.
Concerns
While I would very much enjoy seeing more cooperative-run Fediverse instances, there are some concerns that should be considered. Increasing the scope of social.coop will likewise increase the administrative and financial demand on the various Working Groups and the cooperative as a whole. While I, personally, would be happy to increase my contribution to the co-op in hopes to somewhat offset the burden, not everyone may feel the same way, and the services may not be used by everyone here. I must admit a bit of ignorance here on my part in terms of how well the server maintainers are compensated and the breathing room in our current budget.
Conclusion
I think it's worth discussing whether or not we should expand to run services other than just Mastodon, what that would look like, and what it would require. I'd love to hear what people think, especially folks from the Working Groups who would ultimately be the ones running any extra services.
Fenn Martyn Tue 4 Jul 2023 9:28PM
@Denman Rooke I had to look it up, although with "Peer" in the name, it should have been obvious that it was P2P. I was initially worried it would be particularly straining because of the nature of videos but I suppose with it being distributed it wouldn't be too bad.
Black Flag Medical Thu 20 Jul 2023 7:42AM
@Denman Rooke I use the kolektiva.media instance of PeerTube sometimes. It's particularly handy for hosting videos which are too large to upload directly to Mastodon. In general it's a good experience, although I don't specifically go to any PeerTube instances to watch other people's videos. It'd be interesting for this group to host a PeerTube server, but I do wonder if there are other ActivityPub services which would offer broader value to a wider number of people.
Denman Rooke Thu 20 Jul 2023 8:33AM
@Black Flag Medical thanks! I've setup an account on MakerTube.net for the moment as most of my videos are art related. But still interested in a social.coop one for sure.
alain Wed 5 Jul 2023 7:33AM
PeerTube and Lemmy would be very interesting indeed. But as said in the discussion starter, it would add some significant load on the various working groups. So, to my mind, active people or those who are ready to get involved in those new projects have the first say in this.
Also, I would find normal to increase financial participation to the coop to run extra services.
Zee Spencer Wed 5 Jul 2023 5:04PM
I would hesitate to add additional services until there is an economic model that allows the hosting costs to be covered and the working groups to sustain themselves.
That said, I do wish we had a kbin/lemmy instance; so 🤷.
Jonobie Ford Wed 5 Jul 2023 8:31PM
I've been wishing social.coop had a frendica instance -- and in general I'm pro us expanding into other services, assuming we have the ability to do so with governance and operations teams.
Tom Purl Wed 5 Jul 2023 11:13PM
Hi, I'm Tom and I'm (very) new here!
I've heard that some organizations onboard new apps using the following basic process:
A small team designs, deploys, and maintains the app for some arbitrary amount of time.
During that time a small number of beta testers start using the system.
Also during that time the deploying team works to ensure that the app meets the organization's requirements for costs, monitoring, maintainability, etc.
After that beta period a different group audits the app to see if it meets all of the requirements. If so, then the app is officially absorbed into the organization. If not then the deploying team either continues to improve the system for the next audit or abandons the experiment.
What's the process you folks usually use to onboard new apps?
Fenn Martyn Thu 6 Jul 2023 12:41AM
@Tom Purl I'm still rather new here myself, but if there is a process for it, I'm not aware of what it is. I think we'd have to create one.
That being said, what you're proposing is a pretty good idea in my book.
Kyle R. Conway (K_REY_C) Fri 7 Jul 2023 4:43AM
Worth exploring. Generally supportive.
Denman Rooke · Tue 4 Jul 2023 9:25PM
I'd be pretty interested in a PeerTube instance myself. There aren't a lot of option for PeerTube instances, and having one backed by social.coop would be fantastic.