My inclination would be to contribute 100 GBP, since 10% of our income to the group that maintains our core piece of software makes sense. I went with 50 GBP as #1 because I would like for that 100 to be split between Mastodon and Loomio, in the event that we're not also contributing to the latter.

I don't know how much capacity there is in the budget, and think paying the moderators & admins for their time should be a priority – so if it was a choice would put that ahead of this. I also back the support of Loomio mentioned by Sky Leite. But on the assumption there is capacity, then 50-100 sounds reasonable. Could obvs be reviewed if, say, Github/community issues are being ignored by Mastodon maintainers. Thanks for responding so fast btw,

I’m a bit loathe to suggest £100 since it’s a bit big & I don’t want us to have to cut back if budget changes, but it does seem a good amount while £50 seems a bit small. Maybe £75 just to reassure my fiscally anxious self? Or be bold & go £100 if enough others agree. Giving to Loomio also seems like a good idea, but it’s not as actively in development, so the priorities seem a bit different. Do we already pay for loomio?

Definitely a good practice to contribute upstream to projects we depend on. Though I've seen a recent post suggesting that Eugen/Mastodon is already very adequately funded (can't find it right now, will try to dig out), so maybe we can support other projects. Echoing what others have said, I'd like to prioritise TWG first; then split e.g. 100 GBP p/m between various upstream projects we rely on. That said, for now, good with £25 p/m to Mastodon as a starting point to our upstream donations.

In all, a pretty uninformed vote, but to me £25 seems it wouldn't hit the budget too bad and is a meaningful enough contribution so as not to be "freeloading" off Mastodon development.

I voted 'middle of the road' here (50 GBP) because, although I appreciate the ways in which Mastodon development has enabled the growth of the Fediverse and will likely continue to do so, I am personally worried about some of the focus of the project feeling like it is about Mastodon instead of about the greater Fediverse.

There are many up-and-coming other ActivityPub servers that I'd rather support instead of only supporting the incumbent (after testing them, discussing them as a community).

My general preference is 10% of income, which at current budget is 100 GBP/month.

But it doesn't all have to go directly to mastodon development every month. I could see us sponsor (in-house) development of plugins or fixes (at predetermined rate) which we then opensource and contribute.

@sky makes a good point though about other contributions. Maybe we could/should maintain a list of orgs/causes to donate to, and how much, and review that quarterly or something...

I'd like to contribute to the the mastodon devs for providing us with the bird app alternative just when the community needed it.

Supporting the software we depend on is important!