Regular contributions to upstream software

I think considering that social.coop's "main" existence is using Mastodon I put 10% as the choice. But similar to other people I wouldn't tie this entirely to the main mastodon project but also include other development projects towards the greater Mastodon / fediverse sphere

With the Fediverse going mainstream and Mastodon now about 95% of the 'installed base' they are of few, maybe only project with good sustainability outlook already. Meanwhile Fediverse has languished, unable to evolve its protocols and with lotsa Protocol Decay. Mastodon is the 'Gmail' in the room around which the fedi has become shaped. Their focus, on their own app, is justified. But its open standards and other apps that explore potential of the fedi beyond Microblogging where money should go

Ideally we can fund all of our upstream software in some way - Mastodon, Loomio, anything else we use.

Does Meet.Coop fund BigBlueButton? Can we ask them to?

This should be something we lead by example. OpenCollective showing flows of funds to other OSS and groups would be great.

I think this is a good thought but I honestly think contributing to mastodon project should be lower priority than paying our own workers and maintaining our own infrastructure. Especially if we are considering moving to a fork like hometown, they probably need financial support more than mastodon. In addition I am beginning to observe some undesirable behavior from Eugen and how he chooses to run the project. I am still directly contributing to Mastodon but I would just advise prudence.

I agree we should send Mastodon some funds but the project seems well funded at this point (29k/month last I saw).

I’d like to see SocialCoop fund other Fediverse projects, specifically those that share some of the cooperative structure, values, or have planned advanced governance features such as Bonfire, or the Hometown mastodon fork.

I love the idea of setting aside 100 GBP to support upstream projects, if we can afford it, but I don't know about funding Mastodon particularly. A lot depends on how they choose to respond to the surge in interest. They've got hundreds of new issues and PRs in their Github. Are they going to grow so they can address them? Then we should help fund that. But if they don't, and development is largely happening elsewhere, and we rely on a fork or on plugins, we should focus on funding that.

I disagree with contributing. (1) We should not contribute if we would be supporting mastodon.social and mastodon.online. The Mastodon Patreon is for both, and the OpenCollective page has debits for "moderation" which I figure is also for those instances. These are huge instances with a not-so-great reputation. Is there even a way to support just the open source development? (2) Our money can go farther elsewhere, like mods/admins on our instance. Mastodon has received grants.

I'm strongly in favor of supporting the Mastodon software development, but like Isabel I'm not excited about us supporting the massive mastodon.social instance (or other super massive flagship instances). I don't know if there's a way to distinguish between the two when donating.

I think 25-50 is reasonable (basically roughly 10% of the tech budget). That being said I agree with the others who raise concerns that this sponsors large instances that are not necessarily well-moderated, and that there's a conflict of interest with Gargron both developing the core software and promoting his instance. If the money can be earmarked only for developing the software, I would be more comfortable. Or maybe we can sponsor one of those third party Fediverse instance pickers

Given what I've been learning about how poorly Mastodon is spending it's money (apparently spending $175/hr on an iOS app devs) I think we should a) have a better understanding of how they are spending their money and b) consider spending it on other projects that are doing more to advance the broader federation goals.