I would prefer to keep diaspora running since it has many public and historic data, so a scaled down server will be better than a complete shut down, so I propose to shutdown matrix and xmpp and scale down it to a smaller vm (if we can get a static export of diaspora and setup a simple static archive, that will also suffice).

Who will drive it? I think Subin wanted to drive the campaign. I can help @Subin Siby .

@Pirate Bady @Subin Siby When should we meet?

@Kannan V M what is the status?

https://prosody.im/doc/modules/mod_motd
https://prosody.im/doc/modules/mod_welcome

This is one of the way to send default or welcome messages to users through prosody config
so that users will be reminded to pay for the services.

I think diaspora has this option too, don't know haven't used diaspora much.

https://matrix-org.github.io/synapse/latest/servernotices.html
not sure if this feature is available now

https://matrix-org.github.io/synapse/latest/admin_api/server_notices.html

These options can be used to send messages to users to donate to run the services

Wiki is now being migrated to meet server. @Manu Krishnan T V has shared the data, bady has pointed the wiki domain to server and now @Ranjithsiji will do the migration and updation.

Is channeling funding to some non-individual entity required? Some of you have been footing bills, and you can't really overstate the costs so there is no trust problem in transferring contributions to your respective individiual accounts.

a couple of good things have happened after the last meeting:

1. codema.in has been upgraded to v2.13.1, thanks to @Akshay.

2. wiki.fsci.in has been migrated from shared server to the meet server (the one which runs meet.fsci.in), thanks to @Ranjithsiji.

codema upgrade was blocked due to some database migration issues (which are mentioned in detail in the above link). now that we're on the latest stable available on docker hub, we can proceed with migrating codema.in to the meet server to reduce expenses as discussed before in the thread. if anyone is interested, let's talk in the codema maintainers matrix room: https://matrix.to/#/#codema:poddery.com

@Jyothis Jagan contributed 3000 and @Subin Siby contributed 5000 today. @Kannan V M pooled 2680 from friends last month. Any volunteers to update this on website?

@Kannan V M @Ravi Dwivedi @Vinay Keshava looks like the stripe link for donation is not working as reported by @Snehal Shekatkar . We will have to talk to Nagarjuna and setup a Razorpay link like we did for camp.

Split-up for FOSS United fund spending

Sruthi's bank account

Handles: poddery.com, monitor.fsci.in (deleted)

Current balance for poddery+monitor: -51721

Expected expense for poddery in 2023: 37000

Funding recieved in 2022: 23050

Amount needed to cover negative balance and 2023 expenses: 51721+37000-23050 = 65671

Kiran's bank account

(meet.fsci.in details are not covered in this report because it had a different campaign for itself and the current funding pretty much covers for more than 2 years.)

Handles: meet.fsci.in, videos.fsci.in, codema.in (migrated)

Current balance for codema.in: -9738

Current balance for videos.fsci.in: -4419

Expected expense for videos.fsci.in in 2023: 9000

Amount needed to cover negative balance and 2023 expenses: 9738+4419+9000 = 23157

Abhijith's bank account

Handles: mail.fsci.in

Current balance for mail.fsci.in: 4794

Expected expense for mail.fsci.in in 2023: 6000

Amount needed to cover 2023 expenses: 6000-4794 = 1206

Total amount needed to cover 2023

Total for all bank accounts = 65671+23157+1206 = 90034

Rs. 34 is rounded off (on sruthi's account) to get a total of 90000.

Payment split up:

Sruthi: 65671-34 = 65637

Kiran: 23157

Abhijith: 1206

Note: Rs. 3000 has to be given to Kelvin from 2023's poddery expenses (from sruthi's account) since the hosting charges for January 2023 was spent from his account.

We have to write a blog post about FOSS United grant, any volunteers?

@Kannan V M @Karthik I think we should add an option for people outside India in donate page - they can give to our Hetzner account (Sajith does that for Prav).

@perry previous proposal to FOSS United.

Hi Free Software Community of India, Thanks you for applying for the FOSS grant. Your application has been submitted successfully. Give us some time to review it and get back to you.

Project: Free Software Community of India services

Source Code: https://git.fosscommunity.in/community

About Free Software Community of India services: We are running privacy respecting, free software, collaboration and communication services free for general public. Running these services require a lot of time, effort and skill, and cannot be expected from everyone. We believe access to free software services is paramount for free software promotion. To make sure general public has free access to online free software services, including social media, we host free software applications. The current services we provide include, Diaspora - social networking service similar to facebook - https://poddery.com Matrix - real time chat similar to WhatsApp (newer protocol) - https://poddery.com XMPP - another real time chat similar to WhatsApp (older protocol) - https://poddery.com GitLab - git based collaboration platform similar to github - https://git.fosscommunity.in Loomio - collaborative decision making and discussion forum similar to discourse - https://codema.in Peertube - video sharing platform similar to YouTube - https://videos.fsci.in/ Jitsi meet - video conferencing similar to zoom, skype or google meet - https://meet.fsci.in/ Mediawiki - editable webpages for documentation - https://wiki.fsci.in/ Mailing list - email based groups similar to Google Groups and email aliases - https://lists.fsci.in/ Except for GitLab instance we host, which is sponsored by Infomaniak (https://www.infomaniak.com), we handle the cost for maintaining these services through crowdfunding campaigns. All amount collected will go only for server and domain charges, the server maintenance is volunteer activity by FSCI members. We, Free Software Community of India (https://fsci.in), is a community dedicated to free software advocacy and defending digital privacy. We are not a registered organization or a non profit company, rather a group of volunteers interested in free software. We conduct various events to bring more people to free software community (https://camp.fsci.in) and host free software services.

Current Traction: We are running privacy respecting, free software, collaboration and communication services free for public for more than 9 years. The first service we started, diaspora, still has 1163 users who has used service at least once in last two years. Statistics of individual projects: poddery.com (diaspora, xmpp): 1163 users poddery.com (matrix): 576 users codema.in: 268 new users since we started self hosting lists.fsci.in: 2010 email addresses, 43 mailing lists and 14 domains/subdomains videos.fsci.in: 52 videos locally git.fosscommunity.in: 726 projects, 8,588 users (including some spam accounts that needs cleanup), 41 groups. Repositories to handle these services: https://git.fosscommunity.in/community https://gitlab.com/fsci

Requested grant amount: 100000

Grant Objective: To pay hosting charges for services FSCI runs.

Budget: We estimated ₹ 150,000 (1.5 lakh INR) for running all the services for next two years and after clearing our negative balances (loaned by members). You can see our budget discussions here - https://codema.in/d/VkCybRTY/fsci-services-accounting.

Milestones: To run existing services with minimum downtime.

My payments for poddery server since June 2024.

I just joined here to speak about Grants, and servers. Was speaking to @kishy & @Pirate Praveen about it over on XMPP just now. Basically, I am suggesting, and if this is possible.

I am a client on netcup, a better alternative to hetzner. Been there for around 2 years now. They are better in every term I have seen and community states about Hetzner.

I am asking, if we can move servers? I can provide few server codes (discount codes) for having one or 2 months free for servers.

Since Navodaya's 12A/B registration is rejected, FOSSUnited is suggesting that the proposed grant could be directly used to pay the bills for services. How should we proceed with that?