It's actually pretty amazing that a open source product developed by a tiny non-profit, running on a network of servers self-funded by volunteer administrator and moderators has managed to absorb some portion of one of the world's largest for-profit social networks.
It's a miracle the whole thing didn't collapse or catch fire.
Great job everyone.
That's not really true, because Mastodon is a decentralized system.
The developers have been funded entirely via donations for several years, and couldn't really even turn their creation into a for-profit if they wanted to. The output of their work is an idea, not a product or a service that requires ongoing effort to host.
@SurelyUCantBSerious @mike The answer to that is somewhat complicated.
Your data and timeline are stored on your local server, which for you is mastodon.coffee. They collect donations, and seem to be more than covering their expenses.
Mine is xoxo.zone, which makes its expenses public. So far, we're at $68/mo for about 500 users. https://xoxo.zone/docs/
If the rest of the fediverse vanished tomorrow, your Mastodon experience would still work.
Similarly, if Eugen stopped working on the Mastodon server software, not much would change. We're all running copies of it, and those copies will continue to work indefinitely.
Being decentralized is actually a lot less efficient. It means there are lots of copies of your Toots on lots of servers. But this also adds redundancy, and still only costs a few pennies per user per month.
@SurelyUCantBSerious @mike With time, it seems plausible that the fediverse becomes part of the general plumbing of the internet.
Maintaining it won't be free, but we'll find ways to make it more efficient, and there will be a lot of folks motivated to keep it online.
Mike McHargue
Surely_U_Cant_B_Serious
&drew
Skyler Reed