This was a good watch. I liked the emphasis that you’re not paying for code per se, but paying to support a specific maintainer who is developing some code. In that context, already having a community around you, and doing a bit of self-promotion is important.
The same authour has another interesting video about the weird incentives around feature request bounties, which I enjoyed as well.
I host Synapse using this playbook. I can highly recommend it - the instructions are very clear and detailed and ongoing maintenance is straightforward too (just git pull and redeploy, and 5% of the time modify a deprecated variable).
As for how to delegate to a subdomain - that’s covered here. Basically - you set it up on matrix.example.eu and then have a “well known” file hosted at example.eu that tells other clients/servers where to look.
The only way to get people to switch from Adobe is to wait for Adobe to make the life unbearable for their own customers
Completely agree with this! The big opportunities to get mindshare will come completely out of the blue, and likely as a result of massive blunders on Adobe’s side.
We never know when the blunders will come, we just have to be ready and provide the next best user experience so that the free software is the “obvious” place to switch to.
As we saw from the twitter/reddit migrations, the fediverse did get a large amount of traction, but bluesky became the obvious alternative because its UI was basically the same.
And that’s fine - the fediverse is it’s own thing and many people (myself included) don’t want “adoption at all costs” - but I think it’s worth pointing out that it does hinder adoption in these big moments.
I have a lot of respect for free software projects that deliberately replicate the UI of an existing proprietary project. They make it so easy to recommend for people to switch when those moments come.
What I have seen is that once people get a taste of free software that really easily solves their problem, it makes the benefits “real” to them and they start to look for other alternatives on their own.
For services only I depend on, I have production-only. Since I can only inflict damage on myself, and can often work around problems.
For the XMPP server my friends and family also depend on, I have a dedicated nonprod VPS. My services are driven by ansible playbooks, so I’ll tweak the playbook with whatever change I want to make works in nonprod, before running the same playbook against prod.
Whenever there’s a new Debian Stable release, I’ll rebuild the servers completely, to try and prevent “drift” between the nonprod and prod versions (not that I change things often enough for this to become a big problem). This is also the big test of my backups, which so far haven’t been needed in a “real” emergency 🤞
Distributions handle this for you. Installing your software through a distro, instead of getting it from each individual software authour, means that you trust one organisation instead of hundreds of individuals.
For instance, Debian has a strict set of guidelines for Debian developers (who have the right to upload packages). They will be familiar with the software they are packaging, are often independent from the upstream authours, and are expected to check the package for various issues, including licensing, security, version incompatibilities etc. In addition, every upload is signed, so you can see who is responsible for everything.
And when something slips through, as almost happened with xz, the analysis and recovery all happens completely in the open. There may not have been enough eyes on xz to prevent the vulnerability in the first place, but once it was discovered, there were at at least hundreds of people dealing with the aftermath, all in the open.
Compare this with proprietary software, where you’d be lucky if such a vulnerability was even disclosed, vs just silently patched.
Yep
I can highly recommend Mythic Beasts (UK).
There is no upsell or variable pricing and they make money by charging a flat rate on top of the cost from their supplier. See this blog post for more info
The frontends provide other benefits on top of just privacy - e.g. invidious lets you watch youtube videos without javascript, download videos directly on some instances, etc.
On iPhone, I recommend Monal.
Monal comes close.
nlnet is the main one that comes to mind.
How much money do you donate?
I am very privileged to have some money left over after fulfilling essential needs. So, I set a fixed amount a while ago, and then whenever I am able to make a saving (e.g. switching to a cheaper phone plan) or get a pay rise (if it ever comes), I’ll put some of the gains into donations.
When do you donate?
I remember reading somewhere that many organisations prefer regular donations to one-off donations, even if the regular amount is smaller, since it helps them plan better. So I always give regular donations, even if the amount is smaller to compensate.
I have everything set up as automatic donations in liberapay and OpenCollective. So, it’s pretty seamless!
If anyone ever wants to gift me anything, I’ll ask for them to consider a donation to a project instead.
Do you have a minimum donation amount?
I try to avoid payments under £5. Below that point, way too much of the money goes to fees. For some projects where I donate a small amount, I donate yearly instead of monthly instead.
How do you decide what projects to support? Do you forego donations if you’ve contributed in other ways?
I don’t donate to every project I benefit from, but I care a lot about XMPP and Linux on Mobile, so I donate mainly to projects in these areas. I’ve also contributed code to some of these projects, but I keep donating as I want to support the ongoing maintenance as well as just individual features.
Do you donate to all equally or do you have some sort of ranking? Is it by amount of use, subjective preference, something else?
I care about XMPP as a whole succeeding, so I donate to many projects I don’t even use myself. I wanted to donate to clients and servers for each major platform, so I split the clients like this:
Then, I donated an equal amount to each platform (so, for example all the Linux clients combined would get the same as the single Android client).
However, since I was donating so little to each Linux client, I decided to gradually increase the amount I donate to those over time.
I’ve also recently started donating to libraries / ancillary projects in the same space. But I don’t have much money left to play with for them, so the amount is smaller :(
Linux on Mobile is simpler as I only donate to two projects, so I just donate equally to both.
So, long story short, it started with some kind of structure, but has become more subjective since then :)
What platforms do you prefer using? Liberapay, Opencollective, Patreon, ko-fi, Paypal, Monero, actual post?
I really like liberapay, especially as it mostly works without Javascript. But Opencollective is pretty nice too. If the developer themselves gives a preference, I’ll normally use that platform.
One thing I’m interesting in knowing is - do people generally prefer donating to fewer projects, but with bigger amounts, or vice versa? One criticism of my approach is that, because I am spread quite thin, I risk not really helping any project that much, whereas if I focused on one or two projects, at least those could benefit a bit more.
To be honest, I think the above clients and services like Snikket fit that description.
Now, I wouldn’t say they’re all on the same level UX-wise as WhatsApp, Telegram etc. But I do think they are 90%-95% of the way there, and in my experience that’s enough to convince friends and family to switch over.
In my experience, when people haven’t wanted to switch, it’s normally not been because of the clients, but because they don’t want to install yet another app to talk to someone.
Any new open source software is always a net positive.
But, there are a few small caveats (depending on how cynical/cautious you are):
How do you define modern? I would call these modern clients personally:
Yep, that’s the gist of it. In order to change the license from the GPL, they’d need the permission of all of the copyright holders who’ve contributed code under the GPL to the project. After a few months have passed, this basically makes it impossible (or at least extremely difficult) since at least one person (and likely many people) will say no.
They have also funded a lot of improvements to XMPP clients and servers.
I’d like to second Snikket - it’s designed for this use case and is very simple to set up.
If you’d rather not use Snikket, check out these recommendations for clients and servers.
Hope it works for you! Feel free to reach out if you have any questions.
Different strokes for different folks! I’ve been fortunate enough that many of my family and friends have been happy enough to follow me.
But I don’t disagree with you, Signal has a much more recognisable brand and better user experience. These are things that we need to improve if we’re going to get anywhere near the level of adoption Signal has.
I have read so many posts like this, that try to explain why their company is a special case and why it could never happen to them, only to see the same thing happen again and again.
Tailscale are trying to insert themselves into the stack and become the go-to choice for this kind of networking. When their customers are dependent on it, of course they’ll start extracting rent and capturing as much as they can.
That’s their right, but it’s also a little condescending to pretend otherwise.