Our Intentions to join Fedecan
Our Intentions to join Fedecan
Hey all,
Today, I’m writing to share our intention to join Fedecan, a Canadian not-for-profit organization committed to supporting the Fediverse. We believe this partnership will foster collaboration among like-minded individuals who share a common goal: to create a safe, welcoming space where people can connect freely.
Together we will help deliver a fast, reliable, and consistent experience for all and continue to be free from corporate influence and guided by the values of openness, community, and trust.
Who is Fedecan
Fedecan is a registered non-profit organization based in Canada, with the goal to provide a safe and welcoming space for people to connect with each other on the Fediverse. More information can be found here.
You may also know them by their Canadian lemmy instance lemmy.ca.
What does this mean for sh.itjust.works?
From the outside everything will stay much the same, especially with the admin team. Internally, we will collaborate on tasks related to non-profit compliance, policies, banking and common infrastructure elements such as backup/disaster recovery infrastructure. We will continue to operate separate equipment and instances in geographically isolated locations under different names. We will work towards aligning on safety and security practices in order to ensure that data is secure.
From an organizational structure, sh.itjust.works will fall under the Fedecan umbrella and will share common bylaws, policies, methodologies on best practices, security and legal considerations.
Where do donations go?
Donations to sh.itjust.works will continue to support our mission and objectives exclusively. However, users will also have the option to donate directly to Fedecan, which will allocate funds amongst its projects including sh.itjust.works. Operational costs related to running the non-profit will be shared among projects and these expenses will be transparently disclosed in annual reports published on the Fedecan website.
Option to withdrawal
sh.itjust.works will have the right to withdraw from the Fedecan umbrella should our mutual goals no longer be aligned. In such a case, a predefined provision and action plan will be in place to ensure a smooth transition back to independence.
Why Now?
As the Fediverse continues to grow, we believe it's important to collaborate more closely with others who share our values. Joining Fedecan allows us to do just that, strengthening our operation through a non-profit while staying true to our mission.
Timeline / Next Steps
Over the coming weeks, we'll begin the process of integrating with Fedecan on the organization side. You won't notice many changes but we'll keep you informed throughout the process.
Looking Ahead
We’re excited about this next chapter and the opportunities it brings. By joining forces, we’re reinforcing our commitment to the Fediverse and to the principles that brought us all together in the first place—openness, community, transparency, and trust.
Our core mission remains unchanged. We're still independent in spirit and practice and we remain committed to being a space that's not driven by profit, but by people.
I invite your questions or concerns on this thread or on our https://matrix.to/#/#sh.itjust.works:matrix.org)
Stay connected,
--The sh.itjust.works and Fedecan Team
Yo this is pretty cool, good shit dude
Awesomeness
BTW, just in case you want a different domain, not saying you do, but I gave feddit.ca to the admins a couple of years ago. 😊
Didn't know the shitjustworks team was Canadian, and didn't know that Fédécan existed.
Welcome, and I'm now a donor!
Edit: interesting to see that Fédécan is a non-profit but not a charity ... I would have thought something like Lemmy would fall under a pretty clear 'other' charitable cause:
providing certain public amenities to benefit the community (for example, public recreation grounds)
It is a lot harder to get and maintain charity status IIRC
Saw this getting featured on my home instance (lemmy.ca). Is sh.itjust.works hosted in Canada? If so, had no clue.
Yep, they're hosted on the East coast
That's awesome! Glad to see the collab!
Where is Lemmy.ca hosted geographically?
Per their instance's description:
A bilingual (EN/FR) general-purpose instance located in eastern Canada! Powered by 99% renewable energy! Everyone is welcome eh.
I just made my account here yesterday so this is all new to me, but it's fantastic to see an east Canada instance like that, and the broader lemmy.ca that we're on :)
I'm an @lemmy.ca user and subbed to multiple @sh.itjust.works communities. I didn't know you were hosted in Canada. I'm all for Canadian unity, and glad to see us all working togther for a stronger Canadian Fediverse based on mutual, continuous consent and agreement.
Elbows up! May Lemmy.ca (BC) and SJW (Quebec) build up a better future for all Canadians!
Fay-day-can
Only concern I guess for me is I previously made the choice to join here because I really like the idea that the users of the instance are the main driving force in the direction and choices of the instance. Just hope that kind of ‘autonomousness’ (I prob made this word up lol) stays in tact. Maybe you can comment on that cuz I didnt see it addressed in this post
Yes, this will not change. The /c/Agora will continue to be a platform for members to use to shape this instance.
I suppose the word you were looking for is "autonomy"
Good to see Canada still doing good things for people who are doing good things. We here in the U.S. clearly try to discourage that sort of behavior for ourselves, but if you want to encourage community and communication in an environmentally responsible way, we can approve, as long as we aren't being socialists or whatever ourselves.
Seems like a no-brainer & an all-round win-win, given that you already align closely on many fronts.
These two statements could use some hair-splitting though (emphasis mine):
Donations to sh.itjust.works will continue to support our mission and objectives exclusively.
Operational costs related to running the non-profit will be shared among projects and these expenses will be transparently disclosed in annual reports published on the Fedecan website.
Would donations to sh.itjust.works support the instance exclusively as per the first quote? Or as a Fedecan project, would those donations to sh.itjust.works backfeed into Fedecan in some way as per the second quote?
Will you make public the action plan for withdrawal when it is prepared?
I'm not a user here (nor a contributor) - just looking for clarification :)
I think Fedecan donations go toward shared infrastructure expenses and projects, while sh.itjust.works donations go toward SJW expenses exclusively.
sh.itjust.works donations would go toward shared
experiencesexpenses to some extent, but not other Fedecan projects.I'm not part of the project though, that's just my interpretation.
It's the way I initially interpreted it too, but anything to do with money should leave no room for interpretation. Either SJW donations continue to go to SJW exclusively or they do not. 'Shared experiences' isn't exclusively SJW and is a generic label that can be applied to almost anything.
The reply from @Otter@lemmy.ca is in agreement with you, but it's still interpretation.
If I had a horse in this race, I wouldn't mind some fraction of it going towards shared infra etc. But that should be made explicitly clear for donators giving to SJW.
The exit strat is more interesting to see. There have been so many rugpulls in crypto, online charity etc that I'm now automatically suspicious of pretty much anything where money changes hands.
That's the idea, we also want to eventually let people donate to specific projects if they wanted to. So if someone uses one of the platforms (
lemmy,pixelfed, some other platform) and wants to help fund it exclusively, they can do so. Donating to the general pool would let the organization allocate funds as needed.The donation platforms already support that, so it's a matter of making sure that our accounts/accounting is set up in a way that we don't lose track of where people wanted their money to go
This is how i understood it as well
I'm not inherently against this, but what benefit does this bring users of either instance (or Fedecan)? It seems like teaming up in this way (sort of) goes against the whole decentralized nature of the fediverse.
As a extreme example that hopefully never happens, a decade or so from now, every federated Lemmy instance could be under the umbrella of Fedecan, and it could leverage its power and not federate with new instances at all, making it no better or different than Reddit, and making it difficult for any new Lemmy server to gain traction.
I don't expect users to notice much. This mostly just helps SJW avoid duplication of effort that we've already done, things like setting up proper banking / donation systems, etc. They're also welcome to leave at any time, if they feel we're no longer going in the same direction.
We're not merging sites / stacks or anything like that but we will likely collaborate more, simply to save each other time and energy. Since we are all just volunteers, that's really helpful.
Copying my comment for the second bit
I appreciate that people are asking about this since we want to future-proof things as much as possible. Being vigilant is a good thing :)
As for our plans around that, what I'm thinking is
-
we can be transparent about everything that is going on, and publicly share as much as possible, so that people can look for issues with this organization
-
overtime if we can set up more guides about what we learned and how we're set up, and open source technical things that we make ourselves, so that it'll be easier for new organizations and instances to pop up
-
Or ban certain topics, policy now vs policy decade from now.
This is excellent! Sharing business infrastructure while maintaining server and moderation independence seems like the right way to go.
Seems like a smart idea. In the UK the Online Safety Act is catching a lot of small websites that can't afford to comply with rules that should just be targeting the big companies. Stuff like that could easily happen in Canada.
A group like this should make it easier to make everyone's voice heard to say ideas like that are bad. When, inevitably, they do end up passing, it makes it possible to share legal or insurance costs when they become necessary.
Welcome to the party, pals
I've come to feel like Lemmy has an oversized (relative to global population) Canadian community.
Can someone explain why that is?
I've also blocked so many American instances I just might be out of touch too lol
Pretty sure lemmy started in Canada
Edit: k nvm I'm not sure, i don't know where i got that from because I cannot find any support for it.
Not exactly surprising, Reddit also has (had?) a sizeable Canadian population.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/reddit-users-by-country
As a citizen south of you, thanks for whatever it is (having also blocked most US instances and feeds). It's nice to feel social and not be inundated with psychosis and toxicity.
Looking forward to this. I have been adding bits and pieces to their wiki/guides at https://fedecan.ca/en/ too, as i think having guides related to the fediverse is a must have.
[…] sh.itjust.works will fall under the Fedecan umbrella and will share common […] policies
Does this mean changes to the ToS, defederation practices, etc.?
Our Terms of Service will be likely be reviewed in the future, but our core philosophy of “don’t get us in trouble” will stay the same. We’ve always believed that the actions of a few shouldn’t negatively impact the experience for everyone else—and that belief still stands.
When it comes to defederation, we handle it on a case-by-case basis. We only consider it under very specific circumstances, or if there’s a clear mandate from the community. For example, we may choose to defederate from an instance if it's causing harm or violating our rules, especially if their admin team is unresponsive or unreachable.
Whenever we do take such action, we usually start a discussion with the community to keep everyone informed. In fact, this has happened recently—you can read more about it here.
This is an interesting development, a federation of federated instances. Welcome!
This is great. Thanks for continuing to improve our instance!
Welcome.
This does feel like thing are getting a little centralized and it makes me nervous as anything centralized overtime is a sitting duck waiting for bad actors to infiltrate and take over. Do others share this concern and if not why not?
Eh, it's more like a co-op.
They're just pooling resources to make some things easier, it isn't a merger.
Even if every instance joined in, all it would mean is that someone leaving might make things a little bumpier for few days, it doesn't change anything for the individual instances in terms of independence.
I appreciate that people are asking about this since we want to future-proof things as much as possible. Being vigilant is a good thing :)
As for our plans around that, what I'm thinking is
-
we can be transparent about everything that is going on, and publicly share as much as possible, so that people can look for issues with this organization
-
overtime if we can set up more guides about what we learned and how we're set up, and open source technical things that we make ourselves, so that it'll be easier for new organizations and instances to pop up
-
this is so great to hear!
I am fully in support of this move, great great to hear.
This is awesome news!
This way you can do much more with the teams as you’re no longer held back with duplicate organizational paperwork freeing up potential resources in kickstarting potential Canadian Piefed, Friendica, Peertube and Matrix instances 🥳
Sounds cool. Thanks for letting us know.
Nice one.
I'm not against.
Beautiful Dude
Not for profit < non profit.
In Canada: Not-for-profit == non-profit.
There is only a distinction in the US. In Canada, the distinction is not-for-profit/non-profit vs. charity.
Legally it looks like they fall under the Canada Not-for-profit Corporations Act I didn't check to see what exactly that means. Whether not-for-profit or non-profit.. isn't that 1000 times better than being a for profit corporation?
I feel that this development is interesting and a positive one.
As a non native english speaker: what's the difference?
It's a US term. Typically referring to IRC 501(c)(3) non-profit corporations. The advantage in the US is tax-exemption, and donations to such an organization would be deductible from one's income tax. Not-for-profit corporations in Canada do not enjoy such a status.
In Canada, the corresponing category to the US "non-profit" is "charity". There is no distinction between not-for-profit and non-profit. Both imply the former.
It is much more difficult to found a charity in Canada because our definition of charitable aims is much more strict than in the US.
Source: Have served on more than one not-for-profit board and founded one not-for-profit corporation. The question of "why can't I get a tax deduction for donating" always comes up.
It's mostly a US legal thing, many countries don't have a distinction. A non-profit has some really strict public disclosure requirements and a broad goal (like the Red Cross). A not-fot-profit can be something "Bob's Soup Kitchen for people between Main Street and 7th avenue in Nothingtown", and they have less strict disclosure requirements, but do often pay some taxes (like VAT).
Canada doesn't seem to make a difference at first glance (but I'm not a lawyer, not Canadian and DEFINITELY not a Canadian legal expert)
Their info page says they're actually a non-profit. Not sure why the dude mixed the two terms together.