The cooperative model and social contract.

My initial thinking follows. Please comment and suggest improvements.
1. Goals.
1.1. Short term: to provide non-commercialised, privacy-aware, non-proprietary and decentralised environment for setting up a "network presence" (blogging, social networking, communication and other services). For individuals and groups alike.
1.2. Mid term: to develop the environment up to the level, when everybody (after some minimal training) will be able to replicate it locally (home, village, club or other community server) and to keep it under close control.
1.3. Long term: To add hardware component (probably based on some existing open hardware project) and to make this environment readily deployable "from scratch" - needing just some power source and (optionally) an uplink.
2. Economics.
2.1. This is not the business entity. We are not going to make a profit on it. We want to have our needs fulfilled and - as fringe benefit - build something that would be valuable for other, similar to us, people.
2.2. We will be covering necessary external costs ourselves, pooling our resources and getting external non-commercial support. As a minimum, the contributions will be equal per person.
2.3. We shall try to gather certain financial reserve. This fund will be managed collaboratively,
2.4. Financial decisions will be always consulted and taken as a group decision, unless explicitly delegated.
3. Governance.
3.1. We keep this group small (up to 30 people) so we do not need committees and such. All participate equally, some take extra responsibilities (but not power).
3.2. Proposals, problems and principles will be discussed here and the Loomio unique mechanisms will be used to take decisions.
3.3. In case of doubt, we employ decency, mutual respect and cooperative behaviour. :-)

OK, let's go ahead before the heat dissipates. :-)
We are in a position where:
1. We may get one month 1984.is VPS free.
2. The minimal price is 26 EUR / 33 USD per month (if we grow we shall upgrade.
3. We have 7 people on the list, including two able-minded hackers. :-)
My thinking is as follows:
A. Each of us pays 5 US entry fee (refundable when leaving) and 5 USD per month, effective now.
B. The money will be pooled in the paypal (?) account and used for the hosting fee (the cheapest option at https://1984hosting.com/product/vps/).
C. The paypal account will be controlled by two people chosen by the group. They will be responsible for the financial (fee) management for the next three months.
D. Thanks to the entry fee and to the one free month we shall have a two-month hosting money buffer from the start.
E. As soon as we have the money ready and the "umbrella" domain name available, we shall start from the mailserver and Wordpress hosting (adding our own domains as it goes.
F. As soon as we start, we shall have one month to find a straw man to take the server from Dominik. I can provide one or two proposals - a private person or a friendly social cooperative from Poland. But let's try to check for something better.

Now, the technical question: what do we need to set it up? Will the hosting and the admin work be enough, or do we need to register somewhere? Do we need to agree anything with 1984.is upfront?

Now, your feedback, please.

Sorry I will writing in polish :)

O ile dobrze zrozumiałem startowo płacimy po 5 USD każdy za ten następny płatny miesiąc hostingu, tak?

Co do kontroli nad serwerem to proponuje dwie możliwości:

1) Wybrać ze dwóch coadminów tak aby zawsze ktoś był pod ręką w razie czego.

2) Rozdzielić usługi pomiędzy kilka osób, np jedna zajmuje się serwerem xmpp, inna mailem, jeszcze inna wordpressem

EDIT: Jak coś ja i kilku moich przyjaciół (nie formalna grupa kumpli geeków, jeden z nich jest aktywny na grupie hackerspace) możemy zaopiekować się serwerem jak by co

Płacimy 5 dolarów wpisowego (zwrotne przy wypisaniu się) plus 5 dolarów za każdy miesiąc od już. W ten sposób od każdego wpływa 10 USD rezerwy - mamy dwumiesięczny bufor, jakby ktoś nie płacił regularnie.

to gdzie można wpłacać? ;)

Zaraz, jak nas będzie więcej.

I would agree to this contract, for me it looks like you covered all the basics.

One question about the long term would be:

#3. Governance: keep the group small - it is certainly good to avoid commitees and bureaucracy.

But what happens when we start jailbreaking and bringing friends in?

The very idea of a social network is to be large. Although I don't have any suggestions right now, I think we have to think about Governance issues after jailbreak effectively starts and we get some migration.

Technically, a social network is more than a single server. The goal is to make an installation that will be interconnected with all other networks (servers).
Beginning from 5-7 people and up to some 30+ we have some time margin to elaborate rules and principles. It will become critical over50 ppl probably.
At the same time the installation we make is intended for easy cloning - to be a server for an intentional community, ecovillage or a squat. So, the bottom line is that
1.Yes, we need to work on the governance, but we still have some time - let's have something to govern, first.
2. We will be encouraging people to set up their servers and migrate there.
3. We shall try not to die because of success. >:-)