Background
Inkscape has had it's account on Mastodon.art. Because of various moderation decisions there and elsewhere in the Fediverse having an account there has been more work, and has less reach than we'd like. Instead of choosing another server that may end up in the situation the proposal here is to create one using the the Inkscape.org domain and could host our news feeds. This would hopefully allow us to steer clear of politics in the Fediverse and provide an authoritative account at our domain. To do this we are suggesting using masto.host, a popular Mastodon hosting service that is used by a large number of services and is located in the EU. We reached out to the maintainer and he said with the number of followers and the number of servers we connect to, we would probably need the $20/mo option. We can adjust that in the future based on our usage, but this proposal goes with that recommendation. Assuming this proposal is approved the next steps would be to get SFC legal to review the terms of service from masto.host and ensure they are okay. Then have SFC setup the admin account and create the accounts that Vectors requests (or other teams?) for posting. Then we'll migrate the current Inkscape account to the new setup. Votes a) Approve SFC to setup a recurring payment to Masto.host for up to $25/mo for the purpose of Mastodon hosting on the Inkscape.org domain b) Approve hosting on masto.host but at the $_/mo level c) Approve switching to hosting on our own domain but think that we should maintain the Mastodon instance d) We should instead move our account to: _________ e) We should keep our Mastodon account where it is f) Something else: __________
Timeline Vote will be closed July 11th, 2025
I'm going to vote A.
While I think if we had a more stable server administration team we could absolutely host ourselves. Where we are, we're going to need help with that.
It can always be moved later.
Martin,
On Fri, 2025-07-04 at 11:26 -0500, Ted Gould wrote:
Background
Inkscape has had it's account on Mastodon.art. Because of various moderation decisions there and elsewhere in the Fediverse having an account there has been more work, and has less reach than we'd like. Instead of choosing another server that may end up in the situation the proposal here is to create one using the the Inkscape.org domain and could host our news feeds. This would hopefully allow us to steer clear of politics in the Fediverse and provide an authoritative account at our domain.
To do this we are suggesting using masto.host, a popular Mastodon hosting service that is used by a large number of services and is located in the EU. We reached out to the maintainer and he said with the number of followers and the number of servers we connect to, we would probably need the $20/mo option. We can adjust that in the future based on our usage, but this proposal goes with that recommendation.
Assuming this proposal is approved the next steps would be to get SFC legal to review the terms of service from masto.host and ensure they are okay. Then have SFC setup the admin account and create the accounts that Vectors requests (or other teams?) for posting. Then we'll migrate the current Inkscape account to the new setup.
Votes
a) Approve SFC to setup a recurring payment to Masto.host for up to $25/mo for the purpose of Mastodon hosting on the Inkscape.org domain b) Approve hosting on masto.host but at the $_/mo level c) Approve switching to hosting on our own domain but think that we should maintain the Mastodon instance d) We should instead move our account to: _________ e) We should keep our Mastodon account where it is f) Something else: __________
Timeline
Vote will be closed July 11th, 2025 _______________________________________________ Inkscape Board of Directors mailing list -- inkscape-board@lists.inkscape.org To unsubscribe send an email to inkscape-board-leave@lists.inkscape.org
I vote a.
This suggestion frees up volunteer time in exchange for (little) money. Sounds like a good deal to me.
Best
Jonathan
Am 04.07.25 um 18:26 schrieb Ted Gould:
*Background*
Inkscape has had it's account on Mastodon.art. Because of various moderation decisions there and elsewhere in the Fediverse having an account there has been more work, and has less reach than we'd like. Instead of choosing another server that may end up in the situation the proposal here is to create one using the the Inkscape.org domain and could host our news feeds. This would hopefully allow us to steer clear of politics in the Fediverse and provide an authoritative account at our domain.
To do this we are suggesting using masto.host, a popular Mastodon hosting service that is used by a large number of services and is located in the EU. We reached out to the maintainer and he said with the number of followers and the number of servers we connect to, we would probably need the $20/mo option. We can adjust that in the future based on our usage, but this proposal goes with that recommendation.
Assuming this proposal is approved the next steps would be to get SFC legal to review the terms of service from masto.host and ensure they are okay. Then have SFC setup the admin account and create the accounts that Vectors requests (or other teams?) for posting. Then we'll migrate the current Inkscape account to the new setup.
*Votes*
a) Approve SFC to setup a recurring payment to Masto.host for up to $25/mo for the purpose of Mastodon hosting on the Inkscape.org domain b) Approve hosting on masto.host but at the $_/mo level c) Approve switching to hosting on our own domain but think that we should maintain the Mastodon instance d) We should instead move our account to: _________ e) We should keep our Mastodon account where it is f) Something else: __________
*Timeline*
Vote will be closed July 11th, 2025
Inkscape Board of Directors mailing list --inkscape-board@lists.inkscape.org To unsubscribe send an email toinkscape-board-leave@lists.inkscape.org
f) Choose a different hosting provider. (Sorry I don't have the time to research this topic.)
I've read the TOS of masto.host and I don't like them.
- "currently Masto.host is still a work in progress" - "hosting platform is not redundant / no fallbacks" - "I am pushing manual changes in production and will make mistakes" - "this is a single-person project, and there is only so much I can do"
I'm thankful for the honesty and kudos for getting this project so far, but this reads more like someone's pet project (with a bus factor of 1 - granted, not our bus) than a professional service. I would not buy this with my own money so I cannot vote for spending Inkscape's.
René
Am 04.07.2025 um 18:26 schrieb Ted Gould ted@gould.cx:
Background
Inkscape has had it's account on Mastodon.art. Because of various moderation decisions there and elsewhere in the Fediverse having an account there has been more work, and has less reach than we'd like. Instead of choosing another server that may end up in the situation the proposal here is to create one using the the Inkscape.org domain and could host our news feeds. This would hopefully allow us to steer clear of politics in the Fediverse and provide an authoritative account at our domain.
To do this we are suggesting using masto.host, a popular Mastodon hosting service that is used by a large number of services and is located in the EU. We reached out to the maintainer and he said with the number of followers and the number of servers we connect to, we would probably need the $20/mo option. We can adjust that in the future based on our usage, but this proposal goes with that recommendation.
Assuming this proposal is approved the next steps would be to get SFC legal to review the terms of service from masto.host and ensure they are okay. Then have SFC setup the admin account and create the accounts that Vectors requests (or other teams?) for posting. Then we'll migrate the current Inkscape account to the new setup.
Votes
a) Approve SFC to setup a recurring payment to Masto.host for up to $25/mo for the purpose of Mastodon hosting on the Inkscape.org domain b) Approve hosting on masto.host but at the $_/mo level c) Approve switching to hosting on our own domain but think that we should maintain the Mastodon instance d) We should instead move our account to: _________ e) We should keep our Mastodon account where it is f) Something else: __________
Timeline
Vote will be closed July 11th, 2025 _______________________________________________ Inkscape Board of Directors mailing list -- inkscape-board@lists.inkscape.org To unsubscribe send an email to inkscape-board-leave@lists.inkscape.org
i generally don't mind project to spend money on services but i would say hosting mastodon doe not scale very well. if our instance gets popular and we get lots of users it grows linearly with user base. Having 2000 users cost ~100dolars per month and 2000 users is not even that many inkscape pov (with install base of 4 mil users). So we are eather planing for this not to be that popular = i would question why we are investing time and energy in to it . Or we are planning to be popular nad pay few k per year for hosting social media platform
On Fri, 4 Jul 2025 at 22:17, René de Hesselle dehesselle@icloud.com wrote:
f) Choose a different hosting provider. (Sorry I don't have the time to research this topic.)
I've read the TOS of masto.host and I don't like them.
- "currently Masto.host is still a work in progress"
- "hosting platform is not redundant / no fallbacks"
- "I am pushing manual changes in production and will make mistakes"
- "this is a single-person project, and there is only so much I can do"
I'm thankful for the honesty and kudos for getting this project so far, but this reads more like someone's pet project (with a bus factor of 1 - granted, not our bus) than a professional service. I would not buy this with my own money so I cannot vote for spending Inkscape's.
René
Am 04.07.2025 um 18:26 schrieb Ted Gould ted@gould.cx:
Background
Inkscape has had it's account on Mastodon.art. Because of various
moderation decisions there and elsewhere in the Fediverse having an account there has been more work, and has less reach than we'd like. Instead of choosing another server that may end up in the situation the proposal here is to create one using the the Inkscape.org domain and could host our news feeds. This would hopefully allow us to steer clear of politics in the Fediverse and provide an authoritative account at our domain.
To do this we are suggesting using masto.host, a popular Mastodon
hosting service that is used by a large number of services and is located in the EU. We reached out to the maintainer and he said with the number of followers and the number of servers we connect to, we would probably need the $20/mo option. We can adjust that in the future based on our usage, but this proposal goes with that recommendation.
Assuming this proposal is approved the next steps would be to get SFC
legal to review the terms of service from masto.host and ensure they are okay. Then have SFC setup the admin account and create the accounts that Vectors requests (or other teams?) for posting. Then we'll migrate the current Inkscape account to the new setup.
Votes
a) Approve SFC to setup a recurring payment to Masto.host for up to
$25/mo for the purpose of Mastodon hosting on the Inkscape.org domain
b) Approve hosting on masto.host but at the $_/mo level c) Approve switching to hosting on our own domain but think that we
should maintain the Mastodon instance
d) We should instead move our account to: _________ e) We should keep our Mastodon account where it is f) Something else: __________
Timeline
Vote will be closed July 11th, 2025 _______________________________________________ Inkscape Board of Directors mailing list --
inkscape-board@lists.inkscape.org
To unsubscribe send an email to inkscape-board-leave@lists.inkscape.org
Inkscape Board of Directors mailing list -- inkscape-board@lists.inkscape.org To unsubscribe send an email to inkscape-board-leave@lists.inkscape.org
That's 60 cents a user per year, that's incredibly high for a read only publishing service. We'd get better cost per user by physically mailing everyone a letter once a year.
Are you sure it costs that much to be followed by that many people?
It seems very unlikely.
Martin,
On Sat, 2025-07-05 at 11:51 +0200, Adam Belis wrote:
i generally don't mind project to spend money on services but i would say hosting mastodon doe not scale very well. if our instance gets popular and we get lots of users it grows linearly with user base. Having 2000 users cost ~100dolars per month and 2000 users is not even that many inkscape pov (with install base of 4 mil users). So we are eather planing for this not to be that popular = i would question why we are investing time and energy in to it . Or we are planning to be popular nad pay few k per year for hosting social media platform
Maybe I am misreading / misunderstanding how Mastodon works. but that is 2000 active users on their pricing website. https://masto.host/pricing/ [image: image.png]
On Sat, 5 Jul 2025 at 13:37, Martin Owens doctormo@geek-2.com wrote:
That's 60 cents a user per year, that's incredibly high for a read only publishing service. We'd get better cost per user by physically mailing everyone a letter once a year.
Are you sure it costs that much to be followed by that many people?
It seems very unlikely.
Martin,
On Sat, 2025-07-05 at 11:51 +0200, Adam Belis wrote:
i generally don't mind project to spend money on services but i would say hosting mastodon doe not scale very well. if our instance gets popular and we get lots of users it grows linearly with user base. Having 2000 users cost ~100dolars per month and 2000 users is not even that many inkscape pov (with install base of 4 mil users). So we are eather planing for this not to be that popular = i would question why we are investing time and energy in to it . Or we are planning to be popular nad pay few k per year for hosting social media platform
Inkscape Board of Directors mailing list -- inkscape-board@lists.inkscape.org To unsubscribe send an email to inkscape-board-leave@lists.inkscape.org
On Sat, 2025-07-05 at 14:01 +0200, Adam Belis wrote:
Maybe I am misreading / misunderstanding how Mastodon works. but that is 2000 active users on their pricing website. https://masto.host/pricing/ image.png
Yes, that means 2000 *users* not 2000 followers. As in, imagine every person in the project has a @doctormo@social.inkscape.org fediverse account to post things to. And all of them were very active, there's no way we'd get up to that number of active users.
masto.host is a host of multi-user servers. It hosts fosstodon for example with many users.
The advice for getting the $20/mo service is likely due to bandwidth expectations of having tens to hundreds of thousands of people as followers and posting images to them all.
I've contacted them regarding the single person tos, I wonder if that's legal boilerplate or even if it's still true. But will let you know!
Martin,
I like the idea of creating our own domain but I don't have a good feel as to where it should go. So I'm going to abstain.
----- Original Message ----- | From: "Ted Gould" ted@gould.cx | To: "Inkscape Board" inkscape-board@lists.inkscape.org | Sent: Friday, July 4, 2025 6:26:18 PM | Subject: [Inkscape-board] VOTE: Mastodon Hosting | | | | Background | | Inkscape has had it's account on Mastodon.art. Because of various | moderation decisions there and elsewhere in the Fediverse having an | account there has been more work, and has less reach than we'd like. | Instead of choosing another server that may end up in the situation | the proposal here is to create one using the the Inkscape.org domain | and could host our news feeds. This would hopefully allow us to | steer clear of politics in the Fediverse and provide an | authoritative account at our domain. | | To do this we are suggesting using masto.host, a popular Mastodon | hosting service that is used by a large number of services and is | located in the EU. We reached out to the maintainer and he said with | the number of followers and the number of servers we connect to, we | would probably need the $20/mo option. We can adjust that in the | future based on our usage, but this proposal goes with that | recommendation. | | Assuming this proposal is approved the next steps would be to get SFC | legal to review the terms of service from masto.host and ensure they | are okay. Then have SFC setup the admin account and create the | accounts that Vectors requests (or other teams?) for posting. Then | we'll migrate the current Inkscape account to the new setup. | | Votes | | a) Approve SFC to setup a recurring payment to Masto.host for up to | $25/mo for the purpose of Mastodon hosting on the Inkscape.org | domain | b) Approve hosting on masto.host but at the $_/mo level | c) Approve switching to hosting on our own domain but think that we | should maintain the Mastodon instance | d) We should instead move our account to: _________ | e) We should keep our Mastodon account where it is | f) Something else: __________ | | Timeline | | Vote will be closed July 11th, 2025 | _______________________________________________ | Inkscape Board of Directors mailing list -- | inkscape-board@lists.inkscape.org | To unsubscribe send an email to | inkscape-board-leave@lists.inkscape.org |
I'll vote (e) :
IMO, mastodon.art makes sense sense as it 1/ relates to art and hosts similar projects such as Krita + quite a few artists, and 2/ actively stands for being a safe space - I tend to see the fact that they have rather strict policies and processes about who they federate with as a thing to support vs leaving /because of it./
@René : masto.hosts hosts mastodon.art, so in a sense we are already hosted by them ^^
I vote A.
Which puts this vote at: 3 A's 1 E 1 F 1 abstain 1 nonvote
Which makes it 3 of 5, so A gets a majority. Ted On Jul 4 2025, at 11:26 am, Ted Gould ted@gould.cx wrote:
Background
Inkscape has had it's account on Mastodon.art. Because of various moderation decisions there and elsewhere in the Fediverse having an account there has been more work, and has less reach than we'd like. Instead of choosing another server that may end up in the situation the proposal here is to create one using the the Inkscape.org domain and could host our news feeds. This would hopefully allow us to steer clear of politics in the Fediverse and provide an authoritative account at our domain. To do this we are suggesting using masto.host, a popular Mastodon hosting service that is used by a large number of services and is located in the EU. We reached out to the maintainer and he said with the number of followers and the number of servers we connect to, we would probably need the $20/mo option. We can adjust that in the future based on our usage, but this proposal goes with that recommendation. Assuming this proposal is approved the next steps would be to get SFC legal to review the terms of service from masto.host and ensure they are okay. Then have SFC setup the admin account and create the accounts that Vectors requests (or other teams?) for posting. Then we'll migrate the current Inkscape account to the new setup. Votes a) Approve SFC to setup a recurring payment to Masto.host for up to $25/mo for the purpose of Mastodon hosting on the Inkscape.org domain b) Approve hosting on masto.host but at the $_/mo level c) Approve switching to hosting on our own domain but think that we should maintain the Mastodon instance d) We should instead move our account to: _________ e) We should keep our Mastodon account where it is f) Something else: __________
Timeline Vote will be closed July 11th, 2025 _______________________________________________ Inkscape Board of Directors mailing list -- inkscape-board@lists.inkscape.org To unsubscribe send an email to inkscape-board-leave@lists.inkscape.org
participants (7)
-
Adam Belis -
Jonathan Neuhauser -
Marc Jeanmougin -
Martin Owens -
René de Hesselle -
tavmjong＠free.fr -
Ted Gould