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mekka okereke :verified:

@Badgardener@mastodonapp.uk @thisismissem

Nope.

I refuse to accept that.

We will find a way to pay for Mastodon development. We should also be able to prioritize safety and user experience features.

An open source app I highlight is Inkscape. Yes, it's an open source app. But they *obsess* about user experience. Read the release notes for Inkscape 1.3. seriously. Read it.

wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/Release

Fight giants. Even BlueSky is punching up at Twitter. $30MM vs $50B+. More than 2 orders of magnitude.

wiki.inkscape.orgRelease notes/1.3 - Inkscape Wiki

@mekkaokereke @Badgardener@mastodonapp.uk we should refuse to accept that.

But the reality right now is projects are underfunded. I've heard of at least a few that may need to shutdown within the next 6-12 months unless they can attract funding.

For 5 engineers in Europe, you're looking at a burn rate of at least €30,000 a month (that's €60-72k salaries), then there's operating expenses, taxes, server/infrastructure costs on top.

@mekkaokereke @Badgardener@mastodonapp.uk

I'm currently targeting €68k a year and I'm at €51k now, with €40k coming from just one place.

I'm working on moderation tools in Mastodon, FIRES, leading the ActivityPub Trust & Safety Taskforce, and contributing to a handful of other projects, and I'm *barely* scraping by.

I'm even trying to sell more services. I also help the Hachyderm team with bugs & infrastructure.

@mekkaokereke @Badgardener @thisismissem If Twitter was sold at a free and fair price, wouldn’t it be closer to $5b though?

@thisismissem @mekkaokereke @Badgardener Right, I’m referring to the P:E being too high before he made a bid already, but yeah, his earnings going into the mud means that instead of paying 2x the real price, he’s now paid 10x, and that’s before we properly discuss the business model’s long term viability under a sensible management — this was a frequent discussion when we called it the “hellsite” long before he bought it

@mekkaokereke
Some open source projects are very much about the users. Inkscape, Krita, kdenlive, many others.

Mastodon, I think, is a bit of a social experiment based in part on false beliefs (quote posts..., CWs)

It's not meant to be a platform from which you can do business, or some activism types.

Not yet.

It will happen, it will be slow, but open source projects are forever.

@Badgardener @thisismissem

@iinavpov @Badgardener@mastodonapp.uk @thisismissem

Open source is forever!

🤔Except left pad....

🤔And maybe WordPress...

Wait...

@mekkaokereke
I genuinely don't know left pad.

WordPress, yeah, good point.

Governance matters.

@Badgardener @thisismissem

@mekkaokereke
I really, really like some of the folks that work on the Inkscape project, and I use it constantly, but I don't know if a tool famous for its crashes is maybe the best comparison :blobmeltblush:
@Badgardener @thisismissem

@mekkaokereke @Badgardener @thisismissem I am a fairly heavy user of Inkscape for my hobby projects (mostly fantasy cartography), and this is a good model to use.

@mekkaokereke @Badgardener @thisismissem And Inkscape pulls it off without compromising a single principle.