And these are just some projects, I’m sure you are also full of projects
I can see 3 scenarios:
Money less
Each collective gives a bit, and it is enough for the domain names and the VM.
Donation
We could setup an OpenCollective page and receive donations.
This would cover the cost of the domain name and the VM, and the extra can pay a part of the accommodation of a gathering (like a big house where we can sleep and work at the same place, all together )
Funding
We seek funding for specific purposes, under the banner of LibreHosters.
If IndieHost and EcoBytes want to work on souk together, we seek funding from a public body, under the banner of LibreHosters.
The goal of the money is not to pay an employee of the collective, but rather to pay people to work on specific scope, just project style.
But this would need a legal body thought. And it could be another discussion. But it is too early for that, for sure.
It is maybe early to discuss, but if we open at CCC, and make a big impact, then why not having an OpenCollective page setup already
So I’d vote for the scenario 2 to start with. But I’d also understand if people are not happy, and would prefer to stick to scenario 1.
(I personally don’t need funding, but it might help others to travel to the gatherings, or work on a libreho.st project instead of another shitty job)
I don’t want to get involved with OpenCollective. Other alternatives closer to librehosters values exist like https://snowdrift.coop/ or https://techcultivation.org. If we’re talking about receiving donations as an informal network, one of these might do the trick.
Regarding funding, I already said I’m interested in pursuing EU funding projects. I will come back to this ASAP.
I think EU funding through Horizon 2020 is a very interesting one to explore. A shortlist from the perspective of Ecobytes (some maybe less relevant on sustainability, but still many on decentralized internet, empowerment, etc.) can be found here.
I think it was @how who also mentioned being involved in H2020 consortia. I would definitely like to support and join such an endeavour to bring resources and paid positions to develop the librehosters processes, technologies and infrastructures.
One nice model which is working well is https://solidfund.coop/. Donation, if kept low and offering an adjustable level of contribution, would be nice to start to cover costs. Those appear to be now: VM, some DNS and then also events, travel costs, it would be nice to have disposable income for the groups and a process to ask for it. The SolFund has been used a lot to help nice people get to events in far away places to great effect.
At the bottom of this page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberapay
there is a list of Crowdfunding platforms. What experience do people here have with any/each of them?
Ah, I meant it as a point of reference more than anything. I thought https://solidfund.coop/about was a very nice summary of what they do and offer. I think we need some supporting documentation (the why, operation manual, process, etc.) before this can start working, so I hope it is helpful to check the SolFund.
I don’t think we’re looking for a full plan yet that would incur too many costs.
Liberapay looks to me as the simplest, most aligned solution to our values and goals at the moment. It’s based in EU (France). If everyone is happy with that we should open an issue on lab and move on to setting things up. I already have an account there for P.S.: so I could look into it and maybe create a librehosters ‘community’ and a libreho.st‘team’. Searches for commons, community, isp, etc. pop up sister projects and potential librehosters. For example the Exegetes fight against surveillance in the domain of European law. Their donations is handled by the French Data Network.
