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How is Codidact financed?
With the network constantly but surely growing, I wondered how Codidact is financed.
I think that this question is highly relevant as it's emphasised that Codidact is run for the community from the community. To quote the Codidact FAQs regarding the question who runs this site:
Users just like you! The software is built and hosted by volunteers who are passionate about the need for a community-driven Q&A site. [...]
While this partially answers my question about who runs this site (only partially as no usernames are listed), I don't know how this site is financed or who finances it as running a site and providing money to run it are two different things.
With the network taking the directions it's taking right now, I could see myself spending some bucks to support it in the future. But without knowing the financing model this is a big no-go for me.
I would like to propose that there is a help page that describes how Codidact is financed (and organised) in more detail and what possible plans there are to include the community to help finance this project (donations, etc.).
In my opinion, this is important as something that is run for the people must offer the opportunity for every single on of the people to contribute (which doesn't mean that everybody has to contribute). If this requirement isn't fulfilled, something is barely run for the people but rather by the good-willed intentions of few individuals or one person for the community (definitely not the same things). As soon as these individuals change their intentions or leave, the funding is gone or may be replaced by individuals with different intentions.
2 answers
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Currently, the expenses of Codidact (primarily web hosting) are paid for directly by volunteer contributors or their employers. No corporate sponsored hosting has any advertising or other strings attached, and everything will be handed over to the Codidact organization when properly set up.
We also have a "buffer" of committed funding; we're not relying on volunteers to decide month by month whether to help.
The expenses are very low at this time but are expected to grow as the site usage increases over time. In order to properly raise funds, without any tax implications for the volunteers, Codidact requires a formal, legal non-profit (or equivalent, varies by jurisdiction) organizational structure with appropriate government registration. Once this is done, we plan to have limited fundraising to pay for hosting and other costs.
@manassehkatz has already answered what you're directly asking about here, in how the organisation is financed. But there's also this:
While this partially answers my question about who runs this site (only partially as no usernames are listed)...
So, to clarify, here's the organisational structure as of 2020-07-03:
As for hosting, we have a small server on the AWS free tier under a Codidact organisation account that holds our development instance and runs other services we need. The sites themselves are hosted on my own AWS server - one I'd be paying for whether or not Codidact was on it, so I'm not fussed about whether it's costing me or not.
Like manassehkatz said, we've been looking at ways to legally form an organisation; once we've done that, we'll be able to accept donations more transparently. The best we could do now would be to trust one person with a PayPal account and ask for regular reports, which isn't ideal.
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