from Hacker News

Mastodon forms new U.S. non-profit

by fossdd on 4/27/24, 2:45 PM with 21 comments

• by riffic on 4/27/24, 5:35 PM

  Left some comments in the /r/Mastodon subreddit (shameless plug but please come and join us if you have interest in talking further about the project and its wider ecosystem); I'll copy and sum up here:

  It's great they're keeping everything 501c3, this is definitely a solid foundation for the future of the project. It's very unfortunate to hear about the German status being withdrawn but maybe that's just a temporary operating hiccup. Either way, encouraging news in general. I'm am seeing some rumbles on Masto about particular chosen board members. I don't have a take on this other than to note that 501c3 boards are kind of just people who exist and set direction but they don't really have a lot of hands on involvement most of the time /shrug

  If anyone on the board or project is watching this space, please set up a Mastodon-as-a-service and offer your software, completely managed, as a turnkey "bring your own domain name" sort of offering like Google Workspace / O365 but for social. Good way to bring money in and you can get other nonprofit humanitarian orgs on the AP ecosystem.

• by cbeach on 4/27/24, 4:02 PM

  Looking at Mastodon's growth story, it's clearly going to become a non-profit, regardless of how it structures its company for tax purposes...

• by ramesh31 on 4/27/24, 4:13 PM

  Ehh good for them. But I'm sure anyone who's spent time working in a non-profit can attest, it's a pretty quick path to becoming bloated with admin and immobilized by politics. They'll inevitably bow to sponsor pressure or end up broke and irrelevant. See W3C et. al.

• by RobotToaster on 4/27/24, 3:42 PM

  Given the current geopolitical situation, basing anything that's supposed to be neutral in the US seems like a bad idea?

  The RISC-V foundation had to move to Switzerland because of concerns about government interference.