Me, feeding 2 people and 2 cats on a 60k EUR salary without benefits (because technically self-employed), reading those comments that claim a 501(c)(3) is some kind of nefarious scheme to hide money

@Gargron I think the problem is really more what and how this happened. Not your personal (non-existing) benefits. More US and especially Silicon Valley influence are the last things many people here want. Yet you just announced exactly such a big change out of the blue without prior warning or transparent process. It might even be the right decision and the right people, but how this came to be really seems contrary to how an open project should be governed.

@Gargron It's been barely four weeks since the xz dilemma.

And what did we learn from it in terms of open source maintainers struggling to make a living while giving away their work for free?

Nothing. We learned nothing.

Do folks get that you could literally walk away from this any minute? Where are these expectations coming from that folks put on you?

@aenea @Gargron I agree with Aenea here. I think this deserves some FAQ in a similar way you guys did with the Threads federation. There are many people (yours truly included) that is not knowledgeable of some of these intricacies, which is what is generating the dissatisfaction

@yannikbloscheck @Gargron

In their 2022 annual report (published October 2023) they listed this as one of their goals:

"Set up a US non-profit branch (501(c)(3)) with a board of governors to become eligible for larger grants from US-based donors and allow US donors to make their contributions tax-deductible"

Annual Report 2022

The 2022 Annual Report is now available for download! As a non-profit organization supported exclusively by donations, we like to keep our community updated on our yearly progress, and 2022 was an interesting year to say the least.

Mastodon Blog (blog.joinmastodon.org)

I'd hardly call setting up that US entity six months later as coming "out of the blue without prior warning"...

@Gargron Some people in the FOSS community get really weird with their purity testing. It goes way beyond simple, healthy skepticism.

These people think that if a FOSS project's maintainers aren't willing to dedicate 100+ hours a week on their project for no pay, then they are "impure"/"compromised.""

For a project of Mastodon's scale, the recent donations are not the comically huge amount they think it is.

@QueenieBeanie @Gargron It's not that. It's bringing Twitter and AI into the room.

Folks need to stop with the strawman of how folks on Mastodon don't want Eugen to ever get paid.

Forget it. Give the guy a $200k payday - he deserves it.

Twitter and AI have hurt a lot of people who ended up coming to the fediverse. They legitimately wonder if they made the right choice.

Mastodon can stand without Twitter bros. It doesn't need those who swarm those who disagree.

@chriswho @QueenieBeanie @Gargron It’s not a strawman. People don’t want him to get paid. They don’t donate enough and anytime earning money comes up people scream “capitalism” The world doesn’t run on free despite what this place likes to act like. A lot of people that came to fedi are also serial harassers that got kicked off of Big Social

Agreed. Biz' Future Positive "multi-stage investment firm" raised $250 million, so it doesn't fit neatly into the traditional angel / VC dichotomy. Also, Biz is on the board of the AI Foundation, ia "dual commercial and non-profit organization"; and Amir is defending AI companies like Stable Diffusion against copyright lawsuits. A candid FAQ could explain all this and how it aligns with Mastodon's values.

@berniethewordsmith @aenea @Gargron

I certainly see the value of a US-based 501(c)(3) and was delighted to see
@alshafei on the board, I was at a session hosted by somebody from Numun at RightsCon a year or two ago and was very impressed. But I can also see why there's so much skepticism about the other board members.

@berniethewordsmith @aenea @Gargron

@damon @chriswho @QueenieBeanie @Gargron I have a bunch of names in my head. Not all of them were kicked out of Big Social. But they sure all used the ideological leftist inclination of many on Mastodon (including admins) to harass others in ways that wouldn’t have been possible on Big Social.

@damon @chriswho @QueenieBeanie @Gargron Also, the worst abuse I’ve ever received on social media was on Mastodon a year ago, when I said that I have a legitimate use case for quote posts.

And bear in mind that I was harassed on Twitter for years by far left activists.

These ideologues exist on Mastodon. They brigade, harass, and "criticize" based on facts that don’t exist. I don’t see why trying to appease them should be a goal in any way, shape, or form.

@jdp23 Thank you, Jon! I really appreciate your kind words.

I really meant them too! I'm about to respond to your useful clarifying post from my other account (which has a much higher character limit) with a few more thoughts.

@alshafei