As a project, Mastodon has operated under the umbrella of Mastodon GmbH, a German company that benefited from non-profit status with the German government. Despite all indications that they were doing everything right, Mastodon GmbH recently had its non-profit status revoked, resulting in the team to seek an alternative.
In the announcement, CEO and founder Eugen Rochko had this to say:
Our day to day operations are largely unaffected by this event, since Patreon does not presuppose non-profit status, and Patreon income does not count as donations. We have in fact not had to issue a single donation receipt since 2021.
Mastodon remains one of the only popular social platforms that operates out of the European Union, and Eugen desires to keep things that way. With that being said, this could be an interesting opportunity for the project: a presence in the United States may reduce friction in hiring employees there.
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Mastodon’s CTO, Renaud Chaput, offered this clarifying comment on Hacker News:
Our operating structure is still the Germany-based Mastodon gGmbH. The new US non-profit is here to facilitate fundraising in the US and promote Mastodon there (plus maybe one day pay developers directly, if we hire in the US).
The EU is terrible at maintaining good tech companies.
Like, they have some really important and innovative consumer protection regulations, but they are really shooting themselves in the foot with this one…
I don’t see how this is the EU’s fault. This is some German tax office revoking a status they had previously granted without any explanation. It seems typical for German bureaucracy though.
Fair. That was overgeneralizing German bureaucracy to the entire EU.
But I think the point that tech companies in Europe rarely survive still stands.
Sometimes it seems like it’s by design.
Those well-meaning-but-terrible-in-practice consumer protection laws are probably a good indicator of why the EU isn’t a hub of technological innovation.
They’re at least a symptom of the same underlying outlook on the industry.
Way to go. "Technologiestandort Deutschland“ wie er im Buche steht.
This sounds good for Mastodon. Weird that it was necessary.
