Earlier last month I saw a post from @gotosocial mentioning they're looking for donations. And it hit me that there should be a better way to know what projects, that are building blocks for The #Fediverse, are looking for funding. Additionally, I'd love to know the progress and the overall health of Fediverse project funding.
So I got to tinkering on a site that shows what projects need funding, how much, the progress, and tried to show how your personal donation could help.
Right now Fediverse funding is a black box. Over time I have no idea if these projects as a whole are doing better or worse. If people are donating more or less. There are no trends. Because realistically, if we see that all projects are losing support or something, it'd be great to work together to figure it out. It would also be great to see if as The Fediverse grows, if financial support grows as well.
So I put together https://fedifunding.org as an experiment.
This page might not be helpful, or projects don't want to be listed, or nobody actually cares about the financial health of things. But I cared. And I hoped if people saw trends and who needs what, and what their donations can do, that people would be more likely to provide support. A flawed hypothesis, maybe. Or perhaps adding this visibility centrally is something that projects wouldn't appreciate.
I didn't know at the time that #Owncast was losing our infrastructure sponsor, and when I mentioned it, people did donate, and it's awesome for everyone to be able to see that support visually.
So if you rely on something for your Fediverse experience and see it's trying to reach a funding goal, hopefully you'll notice.
Just an idea to help all of these projects that we rely on so heavily to become sustainable.
@gabek Does fedifunding.org make any use of this?
EDIT: or this?
Ironically, I ended up at your account because I wanted to reply to your comment about #funding on WeDistribute (link not working);
"There’s a very practical reason that there’s no built-in monetization in Owncast. Some people want to use PayPal, some people want to use LiberaPay, some people want to use Dogecoin, some people want to use Stripe, some want people to sign up to their Patreons. For every person, there’s another, entirely different, way they want to collect money."
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Fair point, and I agree that software developers and service admins can't dictate a single way of collecting payments/ subscriptions/ donations. But I think offering a default payment integration is useful, as long as using it is opt-out for instance admins, and where it's enabled, opt-in per publisher (or streamer, in the case of @owncast). While offering easy ways to link to an payment methods for those who prefer that, or want to offer a range of options.
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@strypey With native Owncast plugins now existing, I’m hoping people will be able to build their monetization integrations of choice. That’s a better option than me picking a side and upsetting everyone else.
My bet is people would give more if a protocol for fiat transfer existed. If we could give directly from our bank to theirs and see everyone we are supporting in our banking website. I imagine that most would be willing to give a buck monthly to the developers of all the FOSS they use and to the people that keep their instances of that software running etc. If only they could see that it didn't total up to too much while paying their other bills.
I'd be curious, after browsing that page: What was your reaction? Did you expect these projects to have more donors, or fewer? Did you expect there to be more money available for them, or less? Overall were you surprised about anything?
@gabek I was very surprised by how few monthly donors there are. The fedi really is running on a shoestring.
Yes. And it's structural.
We've created a weird culture of beneficence and abuse where logical move is not to pay.
Why might you ask?
Because a tax which is optional is unjust. As only the fair, the kind and the insightful will contribute. While there will always be abusers. For the vast majority in the middle who follow cultural norms, the question is not "should I do my bit" but "why should I do my bit when others wont".
Since we refuse to understand this. It will continue
@gabek Interesting!
Does the analysis already include recurring annual contributions, or only recurring monthly ones? (Personally, I like to bundle donations as much as possible to cut down on the percentage that gets taken up by credit card/bank/paypal/whoever fees, and I donate to several Fediverse projects on that basis.)
I'm also curious to see longer histories, and how the trends correlate with projects' fundraising efforts.