What are the donations made to joindiaspora.com going towards now? None of the founders are working full-time on the project any more, and the development is being done by community devs.
If the donations are just used to keep the pod hosted, the text by the donate button should be changed to reflect this. And also I think a note should be sent to anyone who pays a monthly subscription to the pod.
Also, what is done with any surplus money donated to the pod now that the money isn’t going towards development? I think there needs to be some transparency in this matter.
Note: This discussion was imported from Loomio. Click here to view the original discussion.
ps: not meaning to upset anyone, and apologies if I’ve misunderstood the situation - I’m just asking the question as I think it needs to be discussed now Diaspora is a community-run project.
I think in that case it would be fair to users if the text by the donate link reflected this new reality. Rather than saying ‘Keep Diaspora development fast with a monthly donation!’, as it does at the moment, it should say something like ‘Help us keep joindiaspora.com running with a monthly donation!’
The text as it reads currently gives the impression to community members that their donations will be helping the development of the network, which is no longer the case. It could leave to bad feeling and accusations of getting money by deception if it’s not changed. We’ve had quite enough of bad feeling and accusations of deception for the time being, I think!
I also think this discussion is needed. I made a one-off contribution in the past but at the moment, I’m not sure where the money is going. I agree with Goob’s comment below: the text by the donate button should reflect the current reality. First contribution to Loomio
Maybe the donations subject could have a blog post of it’s own, Sean how do you feel? Many people I think are wondering about this.
In reality there is no way to support Diaspora* development with hard cash at the moment I guess, EXCEPT if someone wants to hire a coder There are sites that offer this kind of service where devs can take one time tasks from private persons for cash.
As for the need of donations I think still they are very very important and could be stressed. But the donations in general should be made to the pod that the user is on.
Proposal: Remove donation form to Diaspora Inc. from sidebar
It’s just misleading by now. Joindiaspora.com can set their own, we shouldn’t ask users of other pods to fund it.
Outcome: The proposal was accepted
Votes:
Yes: 22
Abstain: 2
No: 0
Block: 0
Note: This proposal was imported from Loomio. Vote details, some comments and metadata were not imported. Click here to view the proposal with all details on Loomio.
It would make more sense to create a payment button that could be customised by each podmin to pay for their own hosting costs, rather than defaulting to pay Diaspora Inc. We don’t want to totally turn off the flow of cash to them as that would jeopardise the largest pod, joindiaspora.com. However, it would make sense if only donations made via that pod went to fund that pod.
At the moment a technically proficient podmin can set up their own payment thingy, but it would be a good idea if a customisable one was part of the package, so as part of setting up the pod, they can (if they want) enable the donation button, enter where payment goes to (email address/bank account, etc) and which forms of payment, from a list, they’ll accept, click OK and it’s set up for them.
Obviously the text needs to make clear that donations will fund the running of the pod (and specify which pod they go to) rather than development of Diaspora.
I realise this is a slightly different proposal, but thought it worth putting the idea forward. If it’s really easy for a podmin to set this up to help fund their own pod, it’s another step to making running a pod more easily possible for lay (non-sysadmin) users.
Does Diaspora Inc, or whoever we are donating to, have a bitcoin address? Bitcoin seems to be a natural form of payment for a decentralized network such as Diaspora (though I wouldn’t limit myself to it of course).
