I have a number of Lemmy instances meant for discussion groups around specific topics. They are not being as used as I expected/hoped. I would like to set them up in a way that they can be owned by a consortium of different admins so that they are collectively owned. My only requirement: these instances should remain closed for registrations and used only to create communities.
This is exactly what I am offering. I want to transfer these instances to a consortium to own this collectively.
Just yesterday I renewed 10 of these domains. That cost me ~400€. I renewed nba.space and nfl.community last month, each cost ~650€. Running all these instances is costing me ~200€/month.
I’m not even looking to dump these costs on the potential new co-owners, this is why I said that I don’t mind keep running them.
First, we’d have to argue the implication. You are implying that any attempt at building anything that is financially sustainable is immoral, something that I said many times is completely misguided, and a point of view that is starting now to be shared by other prominent figures in the Fediverse.
Second, I am offering the instances to be co-owned precisely to assuage those concerns. By having other admins co-owning the instances, I’d hope that less people would be pushing those accusations against me.
Thank you for providing the numbers, these domains are quite pricey if you have to pay 1700 € per year on domains alone.
Stop thinking in terms of prices, and start thinking in terms of value. A three-letter domain for less than 1000€ is a bargain.
I’m thinking in terms of costs because those could prevent any admins potentially interested in joining you to do so.
Lemmy.ml still runs on a server which costs 80€ per month (https://lemmy.ml/comment/13507604). A .ml domain name costs 61€ per year on gandi.
Your hosting costs are 2.5x higher, your domain costs are 27 times higher.
Maybe you’ll find other admins who agree with you that it’s worth it.
Which part of “I am not asking for financial support” is not clear from the blog post?
You are asking a consortium of different admins to collectively own those instances with you.
If the idea is that those other admins can take over should something happen to you, then it makes sense for them to assess whether the whole project is viable from a financial perspective, otherwise it would just lead to them closing most of the instances, which is just the same as them not owning those instances with you.
There are plenty of ways where people can enter into an equity agreement without having to pay directly with money.
Are you trying to get rid of me? Then why are you arguing as if (a) something bad might happen to me or (b) I am somehow unable/unfit to manage this?
No matter what I do/offer/propose, you will always try to find an excuse to rationalize your unwillingness to contribute to what I am doing, like I’m failing some type of BS purity test.
So are you willing to give up ownership of the url and have the instance be transfered to someone else’s hardware?
Maybe I misunderstood where you are going with this.
To be precise, I’m willing to give up some ownership. I still want to participate in its governance.
If a new consortium is formed and if the collective decision is to move it, yes. If the decision is to keep as it is, also fine.