Loomio
Tue 2 May 2017 10:02PM

Which are the expenses to be covered?

E enric Public Seen by 11

I have following the point of Sources of revenue, but I still need to understand which is the vision of this project. It plans to cover the mastodon server (which is something very cheap actually), and what more? there is any expenses that are envisiones. Any plan to understand why is so important to get incomes?

NS

Nathan Schneider Wed 3 May 2017 12:23AM

It's a great question, I think. Thanks, Enric. And perhaps we can reduce the costs significantly. But here's how I'd answer the question:

  • Hosting, domain name
  • Professional maintenance and support
  • Development of additional social media services for members, including videochat, secure XMPP, email accounts, Diaspora, etc.
  • Contributions to the open-source communities that produce these tools
MDB

Mayel de Borniol Wed 3 May 2017 7:52AM

Agreed, this is a good topic to discuss, and I like your answer @ntnsndr

IMO the ambition here is to have a real alternative to commercial platforms (starting with Twitter, but it doesn't stop there). Traditionally this has been done by open-source developers in their spare time, and hobbyists spending their own little time and money on fly-by-night operations.

Now don't get me wrong, those are fantastic, and that's how we got to this point! But if we're serious about enabling a significant number of "regular users" to get off of the centralised commercial platforms, we need to empower these same hobbyists and open-source developers with more temporal autonomy to create better solutions (technically, feature-wise, and in terms of UX) and the resources to scale the infrastructure in a significant way.

E

enric Wed 10 May 2017 5:14AM

Thanks for your answers: If the goal is to have a real alternative to commercial platforms, how is on the table a proposal that only members with payment, can use the platform? Never something where people must to pay, will be an alternative to something where people feel they get by free. And if anyone thing the opposite, which research you did, for think this could happen?)

I think that only is possible to combine a platform coop model in something that usually people can access by free, if is understood as a common. So here the coop take care of a common resource, and their members contribute not because is the only way to access, but because they take care of something that want to be accesible to everyone.

For example look at the model of riseup.net , which could be understood as a project with similar values still not a coop. Or look at the open cooperative model.

As we can see here the expenses are not intensive on the beginning, but they could come progressively based in getting critical mass. So, as more people get aligned with the goal and join it, more of them will contribute also; especially if a roadmap, combined with specific costs of each step is developed collectively and shared.