We have to solve the money problem!

  Blender Dumbass
June 12, 2025

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#freedom #fediverse #freesoftware #finance #money #mastodon #webdev #programming #libreculture #libresoftware #opensource

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Not AI Generated! See Proof

Audio Version

On the Fireside Fedi interview with Jerry ( the admin of Infosec.Exchange Mastodon instance ) a scary truth was suddenly revealed ( on 34:11 ): Just to keep the instance up and running he needs to spend up to $5000 a month, pretty much out of his pocket. Donations to the instance barely cover any of that. And if he will ask people to pay to use it, they will, rightfully so, switch to a different instance.

Our infrastructure is growing into either the direction of insane enshitification, which is bound to burst, because people are leaving it at record pace, or into a direction of impossible obstacles. And money is one of those obstacles. There are not enough people that are kind enough and that have enough money with them, that we can rely on. Donations are nowhere near enough to cover the costs of Infosec.Exchange, or in that case any other instance. Or even any other software project. If we want to have any resemblance of Freedom, we will need to solve the money problem. If we just keep ignoring it, if we just keep sweeping it under the rug, we risk collapse. Maybe it's not some AI bubble that is about to burst, but a computers bubble in general. Internet and all included.

If I die, or go to the street, because I couldn't pay rend or something, if I will no longer be able to pay my internet bills, all of what I'm trying to do will go with me. This website will no longer exist. Dani's Race or any project that I might be doing will disappear.

@Madiator2011 is another example of this kind of problem. I rely on him being nice to have this website be online. Without him the best I could do is Tor. And as you may know websites on Tor are not visited frequently. And even if we solve that piece of the puzzle, and everybody suddenly jumps on Tor, now we rely on all those Tor nodes that people volunteer to host. I don't think it will hold up that well if everybody suddenly started using it. It costs money to @Madiator2011 to hold my website accessible to you. And yet not me and not you, nobody ever acknowledges this simple fact. He could at any moment just simply decide that it doesn't worth his money, and pull the plug. And he would be right to do so.

@Ozoned ( the host of Fireside Fedi ) the other day, watching my film Moria's Race told me that I must do that professionally. That I have to do movies for a living. But how? How would I do that? To make money with film I would have to embrace the copyright industry. Yet if I don't, I have to suffer immensely to have my projects barely survive.

It could sound to you that I'm arguing against the whole point of anything Libre here. It could sound like I'm complaining about the same exact points the copyright industry is complaining, when people want Freedom. It is not what trying to do.

Freedom is essential. Yet it seems it is impossible. We cannot fully eradicate proprietary stuff because we sort of, unfortunately, dependent on it. Blender a great program is alive just because corporations, that we are so desperately trying to get rid off, donate to it. If those corporations will seize to exist, which is what we want, those donations will disappear. And with it Blender will also disappear. This is what scares me!

@Ozoned , trying to free people from Big Tech, started his own PeerTube instance. TubeFree.org. A lot of people immediately jumped on board. One person almost immediately caused the entire thing to crash because to hold the kind of load that this person put on it requires much better hardware and therefor is much more expensive. One person was able to cause the instance to explode. @Ozoned did put up a donations page. But in a month of so of it being online there was only a single $5 donation. This is not right!

Those people that know how to spawn an instance on the fediverse and have the money to sustain it and have it run well, are probably working in one of those corporations that we hate so much. If those corporations will disappear, where will those people work, to have the money to hold the instances up and running?

We have to solve the money problem!

It should be possible to completely escape the proprietary world. And have a wonderful living with everything Libre. For that we have to use our brains and think. We have a puzzle to solve in front of us.

People like Jerry from Infosec.Exchange and @Ozoned , people like @Madiator2011 should not pay out of their pocket for the hosting! More than that those people should be able to live a comfortable and enjoyable life, worthy of envy, from the support by the community. So that they will not be required to work in those corporations and will not be required to develop the very software that we are so much trying to get rid of.

We could argue the way Richard Stallman did when he started the GNU project back in the 80s. He quite correctly stated that it is much better to work as a waiter, or a cashier in a supermarket, than develop proprietary software. I totally agree with that.

But I know how it feels to work as a cashier in a supermarket, while technically being able to do so much more than that. It is borderline traumatizing. We don't want people to be traumatized in order for us to be Free!

We have to solve the money problem!

There are many wonderful ideas floating around. From the normal donations that don't seem to do nearly enough, to petitions that people are rebelling against, instead of understanding, to referral links, that probably make money to those same corporations, to ads, God forbid. To even crypto-currency. There are a lot of ideas. But they don't seem to work.

Then there is the technical problem. If we use PayPal, PayPal benefits from it. We don't have our own Libre infrastructure for money. Crypto is a joke. Yes you can technically transfer crypto between people without any proprietary bullshit. Put buying or withdrawing it still relies on those same corporations. Or at the very least on something under the hood that isn't Libre.

We have to make it our priority to figure all of this out. We have to spread the panic across everywhere we can. And make sure people are thinking about it. And make sure we are solving it. Even if we are slow. Even if we are solving it one step at a time. We cannot let ourselves be defeated. Our Freedom is at stake here.

We have to solve the money problem!

Please... Let's start hacking on this problem.

Happy Hacking!!!


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c:3 @blenderdumbass
Post

  Troler c:0


Is taking cuts from transactions an ethical way to pay for service costs?

... replies ( 1 )

  Blender Dumbass c:1



@Troler If you are up-front about it. There is nothing I can see that isn't ethical. But what kind of transactions are we talking about here?

Reply

  Blender Dumbass c:1

... c:0

  Troler c:0


Is taking cuts from transactions an ethical way to pay for service costs?

@Troler If you are up-front about it. There is nothing I can see that isn't ethical. But what kind of transactions are we talking about here?

Reply

  cptbichez c:2


While i dont have any answer to this problem beside finding out a new base model that doesn't involve money in first place (which isnt compatible yet with most of today societies). If the first spending value is money it has to return to money at some point.

Anyway I always go back to this post.

Contrapunctus's article called a different way to fund freedom respecting software

... replies ( 1 )

  Blender Dumbass c:3



@cptbichez The link you gave which says:

You implement an application, bugfix, or a feature (while keeping track of the time it took), without publishing the source code. Announce when you are done, and set a crowdfunding goal based on the time it took. When the goal is met, release the code and make the PR.

Is pretty much the petitions that I do for Dani's Race.

But I don't think it has any way of solving the issue the Jerry has on Infosec.Exchange, or @Ozoned had on TubeFree.org

But it's a good start.

Reply

  Blender Dumbass c:3

... c:2

  cptbichez c:2


While i dont have any answer to this problem beside finding out a new base model that doesn't involve money in first place (which isnt compatible yet with most of today societies). If the first spending value is money it has to return to money at some point.

Anyway I always go back to this post.

Contrapunctus's article called a different way to fund freedom respecting software

@cptbichez The link you gave which says:


Is pretty much the petitions that I do for Dani's Race.

But I don't think it has any way of solving the issue the Jerry has on Infosec.Exchange, or @Ozoned had on TubeFree.org

But it's a good start.

Reply

  Drop into community c:4


@blenderdumbass My guess is that there are 2 things needed here: A regular information about the money needed (I don't know if @jerry does that b/c I don't follow him) The understanding that people who can need to pay 10 $ every month to the various Internet services they use (divided into email, microblogging, messenger, peertube, flohmarkt, ...)People will understand that and chip in.

Reply

  Very Hairy Jerry c:5


@blenderdumbass just to be clear, it was out of my pocket at one point, but the costs have been covered by donations for a long time now. Sorry if I didn’t make that clear on the show.

... replies ( 1 )

  Blender Dumbass c:6



@jerry@infosec.exchange Watching the thing live I was under the impression that you don't have enough money in donations to cover the costs. And so you need to use money out of your pocket. I guess I was a bit too pessimistic. Sorry about misunderstanding you.

Reply

  Blender Dumbass c:6

... c:5

  Very Hairy Jerry c:5


@blenderdumbass just to be clear, it was out of my pocket at one point, but the costs have been covered by donations for a long time now. Sorry if I didn’t make that clear on the show.

@jerry@infosec.exchange Watching the thing live I was under the impression that you don't have enough money in donations to cover the costs. And so you need to use money out of your pocket. I guess I was a bit too pessimistic. Sorry about misunderstanding you.

Reply