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 It's very unfortunate to hear about the German status being withdrawn but maybe that's just a temporary operating hiccup.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.
and those are rad and I wish them a lot of success. There could definitely be another org who operates in the nonprofit space. People want to be "on Mastodon" but people in orgs that can really showcase the potential of the Fedi generally have little interest or technical bandwidth to operate heavy and fragile rails/postgres apps.
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.
We have been a non-profit since Mastodon gGmbH has been founded and our biggest issue is our lack of funding to hire more people full-time, not politics or admin overhead. We do not expect this to change anytime soon.
> a pretty quick path to becoming bloated with admin and immobilized by politics.
cool, then someone can fork and launch their own Masto alternative or some other AP compatible software can grab mindshare. I don't see this as an issue for the ActivityPub ecosystem (and I personally love the Masto project, but diversity in the AP ecosystem just drives everyone to be better.)
A US nonprofit allows Americans to donate tax-free, but Mastodon is still a German company, now with a different tax status. Quite a few European NGOs have a US nonprofit. The nonprofit does not manage the company.
Our operating structure is still the Germany-based Mastodon gGmbH. The new US non-profit is here to facilitate fundraising in the US and promote Mastodon there (plus maybe one day pay developers directly, if we hire in the US).
RISC-V moved to Switzerland because many of their members are Chinese and it was looking like that was going to be very complicated if there were US sanctions on Chinese tech firms.. not because of some fear the US would interfere in the actual running of the org.
The post is pretty clear about why they're currently a for-profit - their non-profit status has been revoked by the German tax office for unclear reasons. It's better to give people the benefit of the doubt when they are open about what's happening.
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.