[frenchman99]

I actually think it's great if there is commercial use of open source. That means they can reinvest development time into the projects, because their customers will depend on those projects.

The alternative seems to be walled gardens.

Other companies do similar things, such as Fastmail which develops the open source IMAP server Cyrus [1]. I've been a happy Fastmail customer for years. Cyrus is still free for anyone to use even though Fastmail makes money from it.

[1] https://www.cyrusimap.org/

[krferriter]

I do hope they make some sort of official commitment to using parts of these funds to fund maintenance and development of the open source projects they are depending on, especially the smaller ones that need funding. They should earmark an official percentage, which could be subject to change in the future, but at least make it known.

Like 5% to Riot, 5% to Mastodon, 5% to K9.

Could also give to the GNOME Foundation, Linux Foundation, and OpenVPN, but I think those are pretty sustainable already.

I'd easily pay $10 a month for this if they make it clear they're going to give back to the open source projects included.

[mxuribe]

Fully agree that it is great to see commercial offerings which help to further decentralize the internet - and by using open source software - as well as ensuring that their is a business model which will keep them available for customers. (Note, that i stated customers and not merely users.) From a capitalist perspective: the more choice, the better it is for consumers - and in this case it generates the side benefit of decentralization. The only thing i nitpick on here is that they really should disclose the underlying open source software that their platforms are based upon. I mean, it really shouln't take much more than a few entries into their FAQs.