Proposal to take over a Mastodon hosting service, hosting external instances, but also to enable the creation of thematic sister coop-instances
Mayel de Borniol
Public
Seen by 415
I've been put in touch with Alice, who runs the Mastodon hosting service https://maastodon.net (currently hosting 38 instances with 171,652 accounts, including the mothership instance https://mastodon.social) and wants to either find a way to share the workload, or transfer it to another person/group.
Of course, I suggested turning it into a co-op! And here's what she replied (and said I could share here to see if we might be interested):
> I really like that model and can only wish MaaS becomes a coop.
> Financially, the service is slightly profitable, the income over the previous two months was 182€ and 293€. The current servers cost 175€/month (209€ with taxes, it could be lowered with some changes)
> Technically, it works okay but require constant attention (mostly for mastodon.social's traffic bursts).
> It has some custom software that'd I'd be happy to continue working on, in a less pressured context, and see open-source. (i can't guarantee my time without a remuneration, but i would help the migration in any case). It's all already highly automated, including billing and instance setup. Given the right resources and maintenance/scaling it doesn't require much intervention except answering support tickets.
> My main issue with it is that i can't healthily handle such pressure alone, i just feel more and more crushed by a thing that's visibly too heavy.
I think that while Alice might not have the energy to start up a co-op from scratch, she would probably be happy to transfer it to us (we'd give her something as a payout) and become a member of social.coop instead where she could be part of the soon-to-exist Tech Ops team.
It seems to me that this ties in perfectly with our bigger vision for social.coop from the beginning (creating a model for user-controlled social platforms, to then inspire/help others do the same). And now that we've reached 1000 members, the question of scaling is relevant, and I personally think horizontal scaling is preferable (for both technical and social reasons).
We could use a similar model as Q&A service StackExchange for creating new communities (see http://area51.stackexchange.com/faq) which could result in sister instances like art.social.coop, science.social.coop, or even aww.social rather than sticking with one increasingly noisy and general instance.
As for the external instances already hosted by Alice: https://maastodon.net/instances/ they could be a secondary source of funds for social.coop which would help remunerate the ever-more-needed Tech Ops team. Of course, we could then prod the instance admins to see about turning them into #platformcoops (or becoming sister instances of social.coop just like the hypothetical aww.social) Imagine announcing that mastodon.social is now a #platformcoop! It's no #BuyTwitter but still pretty cool :wink:
Another option, in case the whole social.coop collective doesn't want to take this on, woud be to create a small worker-coop to manage maastodon.net and possibly "outsource' the hosting/maintenance of social.coop to that coop.
I'm keen to hear what people think, especially those members for which this would mean extra labour (even though the beauty here is collectivisation of effort, it might be 2x more work to maintain 10 instances compared to 1, not 10x), and so will wait for some feedback before starting any polls.
Robert Benjamin Wed 2 May 2018 4:17PM
Wow. This got traction fast.
Seems like potentially good idea and the direction social.coop was heading in.
I recommend we prioritize getting a few outstanding social.coop organizational changes in order ASAP while this conversation unfolds.
#1 - The Admin Ops discussion needs feedback so can be up for proposal vote. https://www.loomio.org/d/URY9AKci/creation-of-admin-ops-teams
#2 - A fully formed allocations based budget should be put in place to make sure that the base financial needs of the social.coop (including a funding for remuneration of operation critical admin duties) is provided for. Discussion in progress but needs feedback in order to create a proposal. https://www.loomio.org/d/cIA3pK4a/looking-at-the-long-term-financial-vitality-of-social-coop-
Matt Noyes Wed 2 May 2018 4:19PM
This looks great! Helping move Mastodon in the direction of platform cooperativism would be a big step forward. Like I said elsewhere -- I feel like we need something like a retreat to discuss strategy for social.coop. Because it seems so great, and in the spirit of scientific inquiry, I would also like to hear from @mayel all the best arguments AGAINST this idea.
Matthew Cropp Wed 2 May 2018 4:28PM
So I had actually been weighing the idea of going to a third-party for some of the hosting work as part of the Tech WG strategy, so this is a little different than what I'd imagined, but a very interesting opportunity.
My initial sense would not be for social.coop to take it over directly, but form it as a "shared services" co-op owned by the instances that use its services, with social.coop as a founding member. If we wanted to get more complex, it could make for a very interesting multi-stakeholder co-op model, with the staff owning one half of the hosting company, and the instances owning the other half (shared services co-op), but the "second-tier"/shared services model would probably be the simplest.
I'd be happy to get on a call to discuss options and possibilities, if @mayel can find a few dates/times that work for him and Alice and builds a schedule poll around them.
Graham Wed 2 May 2018 4:48PM
Does social.coop have a legal entity, or is it an unincorporated cooperative? (excuse my ignorance on this, I'm new here).
Mayel de Borniol Wed 2 May 2018 4:54PM
Unincorporated, but we have the ability to issue and pay invoices through our OpenCollective host acting as fiscal sponsor.
Matt Noyes Wed 2 May 2018 4:56PM
That is in the process of changing now that we are in IoO and working with Sarapis.org @ntnsndr @thomasbeckett
Mayel de Borniol Wed 2 May 2018 4:58PM
Right, the fee will be 5% rather than 10%, but we'll retain the same abilities, correct?
Matt Noyes Wed 2 May 2018 5:18PM
My understanding is free, but @ntnsndr has the latest info on the Sarapis front
Mayel de Borniol Wed 2 May 2018 5:19PM
IIRC currently OpenCollective takes 5% as a platform fee, plus 5% as "host fee" for the fiscal sponsorship.
Robert Benjamin · Wed 2 May 2018 4:34PM
Not sure the $4,000 figure is an accurate reflection of what the reserves actually are as a budget that captures all the expenses for sustainably running the platform as it scales has yet to be created. Living wage might not be attainable at the moment but a system for tracking critical admin hours and providing partial compensation should be.