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It has worked for Wikipedia. It's hard to live on donations, but as a user it is still better than Signal being a for-profit company, as their goal would then

It has worked for Wikipedia. It's hard to live on donations, but as a user it is still better than Signal being a for-profit company, as their goal would then be to increase the YoY revenue and eventually making unsavoury decisions. No, there is no such thing as free lunch: either the user is at future risk or the company is at future risk. This is the best arrangement for users.

rglullis 6y ago
Wikipedia's costs do not grow linearly with the amount of people accessing it. Signal has to run servers and store the data for every user it has. Also, if the wikimedia foundation closed tomorrow, Wikipedia's content would live on mirrors and IPFS gateways. It would still be useful - perhaps even more efficient than it is. Signal's outage yesterday that this logic does not apply for them. If they run out of money or infra, everyone is out in the cold. > This is the best arrangement for users. I'd argue that the best arrangement would be to stop hiding the operational cost per user and charge them for it. Donations can come later to cover users who can't afford the service. WhatsApp was doing just that with their $1/year fee and subsidizing market growth markets before Facebook got them. I'd also make the case that part of the reason that we (as users) should not accept a centralized solution is due to the fact that a distributed/federated system gives room for competition and diversity. Switching from WhatsApp to Telegram or Signal or iMessage brings us no real progress in the aspect that we are still at the mercy of one single monopolistic entity.
- matkoniecz 6y ago
  > Wikipedia's costs do not grow linearly with the amount of people accessing it. Signal has to run servers and store the data for every user it has. Wikipedia also needs to run servers. Slope may be less steep and there is part for hosting of content but mandatory costs are also growing linearly with the amount of people accessing it. (WMF problems and how money is spend is a bit related issue, but it is not mandatory spending)
  - rglullis 6y ago
    If network/storage were really a key factor in the costs of running wikipedia, they should be pushing it hard to get a decentralized version of it. So far political (Turkey shutting down their access in the country) and not technical/operational/capital issues have pushed them in this direction.

rglullis 6y ago

Wikipedia's costs do not grow linearly with the amount of people accessing it. Signal has to run servers and store the data for every user it has. Also, if the wikimedia foundation closed tomorrow, Wikipedia's content would live on mirrors and IPFS gateways. It would still be useful - perhaps even more efficient than it is. Signal's outage yesterday that this logic does not apply for them. If they run out of money or infra, everyone is out in the cold. > This is the best arrangement for users. I'd argue that the best arrangement would be to stop hiding the operational cost per user and charge them for it. Donations can come later to cover users who can't afford the service. WhatsApp was doing just that with their $1/year fee and subsidizing market growth markets before Facebook got them. I'd also make the case that part of the reason that we (as users) should not accept a centralized solution is due to the fact that a distributed/federated system gives room for competition and diversity. Switching from WhatsApp to Telegram or Signal or iMessage brings us no real progress in the aspect that we are still at the mercy of one single monopolistic entity.

matkoniecz 6y ago
> Wikipedia's costs do not grow linearly with the amount of people accessing it. Signal has to run servers and store the data for every user it has. Wikipedia also needs to run servers. Slope may be less steep and there is part for hosting of content but mandatory costs are also growing linearly with the amount of people accessing it. (WMF problems and how money is spend is a bit related issue, but it is not mandatory spending)
- rglullis 6y ago
  If network/storage were really a key factor in the costs of running wikipedia, they should be pushing it hard to get a decentralized version of it. So far political (Turkey shutting down their access in the country) and not technical/operational/capital issues have pushed them in this direction.