I still wait for reply from @almereyda and Gualter to find out what they think about what i proposed
I also still haven’t heard from @Ben and don’t know if he kept any finances, left from unMonastery #1 pilot session in Matera, allocated for covering possible web hosting expenses. AFAIK he still pays a monthly fee for hosting http://en-news.unmonastery.org/ | http://it-news.unmonastery.org/ on https://ghost.org/ which after migrating from that service would get us close to unMonastery share of current server rental expenses…
This incremental change seems like the best way of going about things. Relocating a service may be easy in theory, but it is always annoying in practice, so it’s best to keep our existing setup until there is a compelling reason to change.
VPSs are also a very good match for open groups like ER. They let us hand out server access pretty freely, without worrying that somebody will accidentally break things elsewhere.
As I understand the current aggreements, Edgeryders would even like to support the case even if they don’t immediately need additional infrastructure. Possibly they want to see how our proposal performs, first. Then they can interverene as needed. Let’s wait for @Alberto’s comment from tomorrow on.
From there you can read what type of costs could be involved, as well as a bit about our model of transparent+solidary financing and resource sharing/optimization, which are at the core of our community-based/supported IT idea.
In respect to migration: @Matthias, if you have a machine to which you can rsync (or dd over ssh (!) + rsync whatever changed meanwhile) the whole machine filesystem to a new VM on our server, don’t you have a simple solution with minimal downtime?
First, this shouldn’t have taken that long. Second, this is the formal ok for Edgeryders LbG getting two Ecobytes memberships as an organization, which we will then assign to Elf and Kei, who would then participate in the Ecobytes decision making process etc… Organization membership would mean that assignments can be changed if there is a need. @gandhiano, could you tell us where / how to apply for this (see discussion above)?
I read into the Ecobytes model a bit and I like it So now we let unMonastery folks test drive it, and will hopefully join ship later. Once the Edgeryders server is ready for migration / once I have time to migrate it. rsync is nice and all, but I know there will be issues … like getting the DNS pointers for Alberto’s blog and e-mail address right, which took me an afternoon last time due to a buggy Italian DNS hoster … stuff like that. Anyway, when we get to this point, we would also get one or two more memberships. (Altogether it would still be just the same as we pay now for hosting.)
we can now proceed creating the respective Virtual Machines, therefore need some paperwork done beforehand. As you may know a mouse click counts as a legal signature, at least in German law.
As mentionned multiple times in multiple places before, to receive access to Ecobytes infrastructure, both for unMon and ER, someone eligible for Edgeryders and unMonastery has to fill out the Ecobytes membership registration form | Ecobytes . This can possibly be one Edgeryders membership with an aditional donation.
@Matthias, to meet our requirements @gandhiano and @almereyda need to start paying Hetzner monthly for FlexiPack + range of 14 IPv4 addresses. This will increase their monthly spending and I guess they would appreciate receiving fees for those two memberships sponsored by ER. Thanks for you help with finalizing that!
As we can read below, @Kei successfully enlisted, which I hereby confirm.
Yet appearantly she wasn’t informed to assign an extra donation to the membership, which supposedly is for unMonastery, but still under the EdgeRyders regime, wherefore only the donative membership is missing and we’re all set. (← Was this actually one sentence?)
@almereyda let’s try to keep it simple! 1, 2, 3 done
1. @Matthias & @ArthurD can fill up membership form as Edgeryders and make appropriate donation. 2 x 1 year membership: 2 x 60€ = 120€ Once Ecobytes implement full financial transparency we can all easily see if and how much additional donation may at some point come appropriate, but not extra financial commitments for now! @gandhiano your form allows only to select 125€ donation as nearest one. I think that should work for ER?
@Kei and I use shared infrastructure on behalf of Edgeryders. Matthias and Arthur can at any time choose to grant this access to someone else then us. Neither of us will preferably get involved into dealing with finances
Based on our experience we help with improving Ecobytes setup to step by step make it easier for other collectives to join and share infrastructure.
Just to clarify the membership form and payments (this has definitely to be improved ;)):
When you fill it, you will get at some point an invoice to pay your yearly membership of 60 €. Then you are a member. In this case, two different forms would need to be filled, one for each organisation.
Additional contributions are given as free donations and we ask them to everyone as a self-estimation of the value of the service provided and/or the capacity of one to pay. If you want to pay only the 2 memberships, then you just fill 2 forms with 0 € donation.
“Full financial transparency” is definitely important and a precondition for having a “community-supported business model”. Currently I’m alone doing bookkeeping and relatively overloaded (over 3 years of non-management of Ecobytes, a lot of mess to clean up), which is why this is not yet as transparent and fluid as it should. I would be happy to share this work with at least one more person, ideally even a team, that could look for the finances of Ecobytes. Currently, I can grossly say that monthly infrastructure costs (~250 €, trend down) are over what we get in from memberships (~150 €, trend up). The difference is not critical because we got quite a substantial amount of donations and we are “fixing” our infrastructure and getting rid of old, unnecessary servers. Still, I find adequate to always ask for additional donation (voluntary, own value estimation), especially when new services/facilities are requested.
Suggestions and actions to improve all this are obviously always welcome, this is not my organisation, it’s ours
@gandhiano how about Matthias and Arthur will fill up this form as Edgeryders, mark 0 as extra donation and just transfer you right away 120 euro to account mentioned on https://co-munity.net/ecobytes/donate and you invoice ER for this amount?
Then we setup VMs we need to run and sort out all the complexity of how to map organizations, individuals, memberships as next steps? As you see currently Ecobytes also doesn’t support donating membership to someone else as a gift. Let’s fix it as soon as we sort out all the other memberships coming via thread on allmende.io
Yes, please, lets simplify all this and not get lost in bureaucracy.
Edgeryders (and only ER) will apply for membership, filling in the form (@matthias, @arthur). The standard membership costs 60 €.
You proposed previously 2x memberships (120 €), but apparently only ER can pay (not @kai, not @pavlik_elf - I’ll mark them therefore as “free memberships”). Since under ER membership more people will be “served”, ER makes an additional donation of 75 € (summing up to 135 €) or something around this.
ER will get an invoice for the full amount (membership+donation)
We definitely need to improve the model and communication on how all this works. Any willing communication/PR specialists around?
I’ve just filled and sent the EcoBytes application form for the Edgeryders organizational membership plus added donation as agreed above. Awaiting our invoice now
There are two things missing, however: (1) we need to know who the second recipient of the membership, besides yourself, is (@Kei signaled she is already a member) and (2) @ArthurD needs to make the payment to Ecobyte.
For the avoidance of confusion: The final agreement above, written a bit after your comment, states that we should register one membership for the Edgeryders organization and include an additional payment so that it in total covers the two “free memberships” of Kei and Elf. I’ve done accordingly, wait for the invoice now and will forward it to @ArthurD for payment when it arrives (confirming it to be legit, according to our “two directors” rule for expenses).
Note: I appreciate that Elf helped simplify the process in the discussion above
