Mastodon becoming a US entity with a neoliberal board of directors and the goal of growth über alles is the issue here folks, not whether Eugen and company are compensated for their work. Of course they should be and well too. Or is that a privilege reserved only for the mediocre yes-people at the Googles and the Facebooks of the world?
@aral Very specifically, this is a German, not an EU, fuck-up. The German tax codes defines a very narrow, and very 1950ies view of what’s a charitable cause and the Federal ministry of finances has not been moving on this point at all. Notably, other charities with political intent had their previously granted status removed (check Campact for instance).
There’s another big issue with this in general, and that’s an EU issue: There is no way to set up an EU-wide charitable cause entity. So you’d have to run 27 entities to get tax deductability (is this a word?) in the entire EU.
While it’s sad to read this, it’s absolutely understandable that they took this step. The implications … yeah, yet another Mozilla or Wikipedia foundation with questionable priorities decoupled from the actual project.
But please bash the German government and only then the EU ;-)
@aral No, tbh, that’s not how that should work imho either.
They way it should work is for now adding FOSS to the list of charitable causes unter §52 Abgabenordnung. Then work toward a European charitable entity (we already have the SE), say a Fundatio Europaea or (FE). The only reason we don’t have this yet, is because it was not pushed as much as the corporate SE. Once that’s there, all EU member states can extend their regulations on tax reductions for charitable causes to include FEs; and the EU could, where it’s actually collecting taxes (which are very few occasions), do so as well.
TLDR; this is a monumental fuck-up by the EU, proving it is incapable of retaining alternatives to Silicon Valley even when it’s lucky enough to have them sprout up under its own nose. (We already know it’s incapable of producing them. Although it could, if it wanted to: https://ar.al/2019/11/29/the-future-of-internet-regulation-at-the-european-parliament/)
To be fair, it’s at least half of what he’d be getting if he had a job at a well-funded tech company in the mainstream. And, more so at a Google or a Facebook.
This isn’t about Eugen’s compensation. Eugen should be compensated and be able to live a comfortable life given what he does. Heck, asshats who work at Google and Facebook do. Why should people have to sacrifice to do good?
No, this is about Silicon Valley influence, the wrong success criteria, and loss of control. (3/7)
And, if the EU didn’t have its head stuck up its own arse, it would have already made sure that Mastodon could be kept in the EU and those working on it well compensated while also ensuring that the correct success criteria (hint: NOT growth at all costs but decentralisation) were set. But not with this EU Commission and its fixation with the Single Market above all else. (4/7)
@aral
You seem to have more information than the rest of us? What did the EU exactly do? Because Eugen was lying when he said that the German Tax office retracted the non-profit benefits "without giving a reason". They can't and won't do that! If he says otherwise he either didn't understand and challenge the reason given or he is lying - period.
They probably see Mastodon becoming a US entity and having Silicon Valley folks on the board as a sign of success when it is an abject failure of the EU, and all its costly PR initiatives (Next Generation Internet, etc.) It’s the Web story with Tim Berners-Lee and CERN all over again. And we know where that neoliberal and corporate capture left us. (5/7)
All that said, the one thing this isn’t about is how much Eugen makes. If we’re saying any old asshat engineer at Google has a right to a comfortable life but folks working on free and open source don’t, let’s not expect too many people to do the latter as a full-time occupation. (6/7)
If, on the other hand, maybe we’d like more folks to contribute to the commons and maybe not even be captured by Silicon Valley how about this radical idea: Fund them so they can live (at least as well) as any mediocre yes-person at a mainstream tech company.
@aral not sure I agree with that, I'm sure there are enough good engineers out here who'd be happy to takeover from them at the salary he quoted getting, we'll never be able to compete with the money people in the US who will make large bets on the basis of taking it all later as that will be their goal have no doubt about that. Will they relinquish control do you think, I suspect not and so we who have a huge input into what this place is have no say
@peterainbow We can easily compete with them at the levels where it matters. But it requires long term thinking and an EU that doesn’t frame success through “Digital Single Market.” The amounts we’re talking about are a drop in the bucket. Instead we have folks begging for scraps from NGI, NLNet, etc., to implement “this or that feature”. This piecemeal approach is the problem.
@aral yeah, the whole "you shouldn't get paid well for doing something good" e.g. people working for charities, is such an interesting societal reflex. I find it really confusing, but also notice I have some of the same initial gut reaction that I can't really explain.
@paulcox@aral It's probably because of what motivation you have. If you get too much money it seems to destroy the trust that you do it for good. Hard to compute, it seems.
@tchauhan@aral there's plenty more in the Fediverse other than Mastodon, people can switch to different server software without abandoning anything. It's the power of the Fediverse. If anything, this is one more reason why there should be a stronger push to move away from the Mastodon “branding”
@oblomov@aral Is there somewhere I can read more about this? I don't know the fediverse very well, and everything seems to be revolving around mastodon as the primary product.
Imagine if you could comment on Instagram from Twitter, or like a YouTube video from Facebook or Reddit.
This is what the Fediverse allows with its counterparts (Pixelfed for photo sharing, Mastodon and other platforms like Misskey or Akkoma for microblogs, PeerTube for videos, Friendica in place of Facebook, Lemmy and kbin for link sharing.)
@aral I saw posts from the Mastodon team saying unequivocally their operations are remaining in the EU and that the US entity exists only to raise funds for development of the Fediverse and Mastodon in particular. Did you read the same posts & doubt them? I'm interested in whether you have info/perspective I don't when you claim it's becoming a US entity.
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