On the Fireside Fedi interview with Jerry ( the admin of Infosec.Exchange Mastodon instance ) a scary truth was suddenly revealed ( on 34:11 ): Just to keep the instance up and running he needs to spend up to $5000 a month, pretty much out of his pocket. Donations to the instance barely cover any of that. And if he will ask people to pay to use it, they will, rightfully so, switch to a different instance.
  • hansolo@lemmy.today
    8·
    1 day ago

    The problem with the money problem is the money part. As much as I actually do want to donate to ALL the open source platforms I use, I don’t have enough to do that equitably between platforms and even cover processing costs of the payment. 25 services split $100? Why bother?

    A foundation with an endowment is actually the solution. The Open Source Foundation (or someone like them) needs to become a neutral arbiter and incubator.

    But also - I would, and can, provide labor. I would love to give anything FOSS 20-30 hours a week of my time. But doing what? Should I get a part time job to support 25 FOSS services? Take Fivr gigs and donate it all? Or can I just directly hustle a part time work week somehow?

  • SufferingSteve@feddit.nuEnglish
    61·
    1 day ago

    Federated solutions are just a step in the right direction, to be able to have people access free software and platforms, they will have to do something. Either pay (which they dont) or help provide the platforms.

    The first step in helping provide the platform is probably to help host the load, to help host the load, the first thing is to be able to hold your data on your devices, the second is to be able to share your data with other devices.

    The first part of being able to hold your data and share it is to own your identity and hold that locally. SSI identities help with this, that means that no server needs to hold and own your identity.

    If the identity is kept safe, even though you are the one storing it on your hardware,that means the data you ship, can be trusted through signing.

    Once that is the case, it’s just distribution and availability. Which there already are many solutions such as IPFS, or other CDN similar solutions, that means that volunteers can provide as much data storage/distribution as they want from their own hardware.

    It all starts with owning your own identity, that enables the other solutions to be trustworthy.