One of the common misnomers around the migration away from toxic tech stacks is that the options are either 1) services managed by a company or 2) everyone #selfhosting themselves.

There is however an often overlooked 3rd option of community-scaled infrastructure. Here a group identifies their needs, plans & deploys to meet them. Much like a community garden, that infrastructure has people skilled & dedicated to its upkeep in providing for that group, working bees & skillshare as needed.

1/n

Here are some examples of this at work, in this case the Slack alternative Mattermost:

1. Our own instance in DE, used for online training
2. My friend's instance served from under her desk, on which I teach her students in CA
3. An instance in CH hosting thousands of environmental defenders that I deployed
4 An instance we deployed in IS hosting a US immigration support NGO, resistant to ICE warrants

There is no one deployment for all here, each instance meets the unique needs of the group

@JulianOliver please use matrix bro. Mattermost isn’t that OpenSource! Most of the good things things are closed and enterprise.
@xr1st0ph Matrix/Element is great in many ways (E2EE) but memberships I've deployed for have found it too geeky, whereas alt platform averse can generally smoothly bump from Slack to MM with little to no complaints. Matrix/Element is also too sluggish for big channels of 1k+ members, even on powerful machines. Runs hot & starts to crawl in the thousands, whereas MM cruises through it. Matrix on smaller scales? Fine. I think their Olm, implementation of Double Ratchet holds them back a bit there.
@JulianOliver we moved from rocket chat to matrix 2 yr ago. we have alot of groups. some with over 1k+ users. Our userbase is 60+. it works. Not saying it is all smooth. but mattermost is us based, and isnt real open. you have to pay the http://sso.tax/ ... yea the nice ui ... ok but element is getting there. the element X app is so good!
remarkable, that in your sphere of influence, UX is more important than opsec to you. why?
The SSO Wall of Shame

A list of vendors that treat single sign-on as a luxury feature, not a core security requirement.

The SSO Wall of Shame
Message limit 10000 team edition · Issue #34271 · mattermost/mattermost

We have a problem since the new upgrade. "10.000-message limit reached. Messages sent before 26. September 2025 are hidden -Restore Access" appeared. so the messages before that date can not be acc...

GitHub

@xr1st0ph Can compile that out easily if handy with Go, or just use the drop in binary from Frama:

https://framagit.org/framasoft/framateam/mostlymatter

Framasoft / Framateam / Mostlymatter · GitLab

Mostlymatter is a fork of Mattermost without users limit. Download binaries on https://packages.framasoft.org/projects/mostlymatter/. Mattermost is an open source platform for...

GitLab
@JulianOliver there is no active upstream or someone maintaining this. thats honestly cant be a good or safe way for infrastructure.

@xr1st0ph It's just a few lines and a diff quickly shows it's gtg. If concerned about the fork, just grab the source, patch and compile. Takes a few mins.

Even so, Framasoft have a longstanding great rep.

@JulianOliver sure. but something like this adds up in DevOps and administration. How anyone can tell this will work next year? or the apps will get this limit to? i will definitly not compiling android and ios apps by hand everytoime an update hits. how to distribute?
Shouldnt this be taken in concideration when using such a fork?
@xr1st0ph All the official apps work fine. I use patched MM server (the MM Go binary) on a bunch of instances.
@JulianOliver thats not my why of doing things. out activists and i go the extra mile. but i think its great that it works for you. :)

@xr1st0ph We work very hard at this, and have been at it for years. Nonetheless, you may be better at convincing groups to use tools you think they should use than we are.

We find trying to convince folk is not always the wisest end game. Rather, a compromise is sometimes necessary for a successful staged migration away from jurisdictionally or materially compromised services, with outcomes of higher platform morale, so lower chance of regression &/or splintering, & better overall org opsec.

@JulianOliver THIS!

Are you interrested in a videocall? taking this further? I would love to learn something about your work.