I can’t see an announcement to link to at Feneas.org yet, but I just got an email sent out to financial members of the Federated Networks Association Ry informing that the organization is most likely shutting down. This is mainly due to a lack of volunteers to help with both governance and sysadmin on the hosted services. There is an AGM on Dec 9, which is open to non-members, although only financial members can vote. This will probably be the final chance for anyone willing to step up and take over the organization, or just the hosted services it runs, to put forward a transition plan.
If anyone is involved in an organization that could take over hosting of the Feneas services, or help users hosted there move to other hosting (and maybe help keep the services online during the transition), please get in touch with Feneas admins ASAP to discuss this: https://feneas.org/contact/
Fediverse projects currently hosted by Feneas.org services include fediverse.party and We Distribute.
I DM’ed @light on fedi and suggested a move to Codeberg + possibly Codeberg Pages (which now has custom domain and per-repository support), if the Fediverse Party website can run on that. On Codeberg we have:
Guest that on the Feneas forum - once an official announcement is made - we might invite all members that are related to AP initiatives to move over to SocialHub. Fediverse Party already sees this forum as their home, and similar to ForgeFed.
There’s the issue of migrating ForgeFed information that exists on that forum. I know that @fr33domlover was looking into migrating posts before, but that didn’t work, idk? Would also give a heads-up to @anon20068248 as this info is of high-value to forgefriends.org
Did you try NGI0?
All the EU politicians assured me multiple times that they should help interoperability protocols like ActivityPub …
Otherwise the EU Tech Lead assured us that he will talk to Breton about funding, see minutes of the meeting – maybe Feneas can write him (?)
It seems the problem isn’t just the lack of funding, but the lack of personnel able to dedicate time to running the organization. Funding management positions could help, but reading between the lines, I don’t think there’s anyone able or willing to put the time into keeping the org alive, let alone applying for such funding.
No, unfortunately not. It was in the week of the United Nations Internet Governance Forum.
Ironically the IGF site was unreachable 1.5 of 3 days
¯\ _ (ツ)_/¯
Hello! The situation is regrettably such that the association’s primus motor Jason Robinson is no longer able to continue in his current role, and unless Feneas can find a viable executive committee team to keep the association going there will be no choice but to shut it down.
The decision on shutting down - and what to do with the assets - will likely be taken in early January (AGM date still not set).
In the meantime there is also an effort to look for volunteers willing to donate a few hours of work per month to keep the day-to-day things going at Feneas. If you or somebody you know feels like you could realistically make such a commitment for 12 months please let me know, I am happy to discuss in more detail.
As further clarification, if the association is shut down (ie no executive committee is found to continue), current funds will allow running services until around end of February 2022. Of course this timeline can be flexible so that everyone gets their data migrated especially re GitLab.
We will all know what the situation is on the 4th of January, which is looking to be the day another vote will be held. Information will go out immediately after that.
What does it entail to maintain fediverse.party and other AP-related services? If the cost and maintenance time are not too high we might be able to see least find a workaround before funds are depleted.
It would be useful though to maintain some kind of cross-protocol organization.
I am not sure on the Feneas side. But for fedi party we monitor and probably move to Codeberg if need arises. Seems to offer the facilities needed for the site. The watchlists may become part of delightful project.
considered that it was not possible that “we” switch the conf.activitypub.rocks DNS over 3 years and many private people are paying official ressources, I doubt it is a cost and maintenance problem – more a bottleneck problem.
I was asked multiple times to switch on the Conf 2019 page again, which I did.
Now I will pay 1 year more. While this was never the problem since I stopped funding-seeking and did an ordinary job.
The problem is just to have an accessible server and 1 A-entry … … …
Also I do not understand
to see least find a workaround before funds are depleted
Federated Networks Association ry will be dissolved
Due to recent lack of activity within the association, issues maintaining the current services and lack of new committee members wanting to step up, the members of Federated Networks Association ry (Feneas) have decided to dissolve the association. The decision to do so was done as per the rules of the association in two Annual General Meetings held no more than 30 days apart. You can find the meeting logs via the below links:
Before turning off the Matrix homeserver, all local users will be deactivated, parting them from all the rooms they have joined. This will start happening on the 1st of March (UTC morning), with the homeserver turned off a few days after the process ends.
WeDistribute (wedistribute.org) are Fediverse Party (fediverse.party) will be announced once the stakeholders for those services have been contacted fully. They are expected to re-own their service for their own hosting, but if that doesn’t happen, the services will shut down on a date agreed with the stakeholders.
All remaining data will be destroyed on or soon after the 1st of April. This will include backups. Some exemptions will be;
membership details will be kept until necessary by law (date to be cleared)
financial details will be kept until necessary by law (date to be cleared)
the public repositories of the association on the GitLab instance will be mirrored on GitLab.com. These can be found from Feneas · GitLab
The feneas.org domain will be handed over to standing committee vice-president Lukas Matt as agreed in the 4th January AGM. A static website will be hosted there to give details on what Feneas was and what happened to it.
The Matrix homeserver server key will be securely stored should the homeserver ever need to come back online. All other homeserver data will be destroyed.
Once all the services have been ramped down or moved over, and data destroyed, any accounts left over will be closed and the association will be terminated in the Finnish associations registry.
As agreed in the 4th January AGM, if any funds remain in the Feneas bank account (possibly in the amount of tens of euros), they will be donated to Framasoft.
So long and thanks for federating
As the Feneas committee president and founding member, I want to thank all the members and users who trusted Feneas over the years. It’s been a good and often fun 3,5 years of Feneas. While we managed to create a sometimes vibrant collection of services and attract people and projects from around the Fediverse, ultimately we failed to build a community that would last longer than the amount of time founding members could dedicate a good chunk of their life. For both the main founders (Lukas and me, Jason) real life and other priorities caught up with us, and thus it’s time to move forward. It was also clear from the discussions at the end that not enough active community members exist to keep the association afloat. I’m personally happy we did this project, even though it had to reach its end.
Our chat rooms are still active over at Matrix (#feneas:feneas.org) and Libera (#feneas). If you have questions, for example about exporting your data, or just want to say hi, feel free to pop in. At least the main chatroom is going to stay alive after the association is finally taken off the official association registry, so you’re welcome to say hi even afterwards.
If you have concerns or questions you can also reach out via email with generic questions to hq@feneas.org or privacy@feneas.org (for privacy queries). You can also reach me via a private message on Matrix at @jaywink:federator.dev.
All the best to everyone!
Best regards,
Jason Robinson
Founder and committee president
Federated Networks Association ry
Again, if there is anything relevant to the ActivityPub community that we can salvage, the offer still stands. It would be detrimental to see fediverse.party or the list of implementations go.
Loïc Dachary of forgefriends has tasked himself with transfering the ForgeFed discussions with help of @jaywink. This will be to the forgefriends community forum where all forge federation projects have a home.
REMINDER