🧠 Another month, another reminder.

💵 I've just upload the services invoices for past month:

💸 14,11€ Amazon AWS: https://opencollective.com/jvm-social/expenses/253783

💸 8,23€ Hetzner: https://opencollective.com/jvm-social/expenses/253782

🙏 Huge thanks to those that have helped with any amount of money to the server maintenace: @vmj @tonivade @dgomezg @hawkesnest @petrovicky

💪 I really feel like they are too few brave fellows considering the server have 51 "active users" (whatever it means from the server point of view, but at least 40 logged in last week and +20 daily). Come on! If you feel it's useful or just you think itś good to have a independent server instead of centralized and controlled, be part of it.

👁️ Remember that you can check where every cent goes looking at https://opencollective.com/jvm-social

Thank you!!

👋 Hello!

There are some new faces who have joined us in the past few weeks, so first of all—welcome to the server!

📰 I assume you read this when you joined, but just as a reminder: we're a server devoted to developers, especially JVM developers. You can find the rules at https://jvm.social/about (there’s also a link to contribute financially, if you can, and see exactly where every cent goes). Keeping this up and running isn’t expensive, but it does cost some money.

ℹ️ Now, a message to all users: I’ve just set up a Mastodon/Fediverse relay. You may be wondering what the heck that is. Basically, it’s a way to bring in traffic from other servers and help you discover new accounts. Your timeline will become more active, and hopefully, you’ll get better and more diverse content.

👓 As of now, only two servers are connected to this relay: ours and https://foojay.social — another server with very similar interests. I hope you all find it useful. Maybe other servers will join soon as well.

Sadly, I start considering if Mastodon really have some impact at all. I've always believed that having the control of your content is a must. And that's why I try to have most of my content under my control.

But also, social networks are for that: to be social. I do not plan to become a influencer but yesterday it was a bit painful the lack of ANY interaction here.

I was part of the organization of https://jmad.madridjug.es, a small openspace unconference we create to celebrate Java 30th aniversary (https://jvm.social/@jmiguel/114522106079659463 , https://jvm.social/@jmiguel/114523466295298658).

The event was (for me, for the organizers and for assistants) a success: we talked about a lot of topics, from productivity to AI. From mentoring junior people to testing strategies. And also, of course some super nice networking.

Do you know how many interactions I got?. Zero. 0️⃣ (to be honest: one, from a friend how also was in the event). How many in Bluesky? 12. Not a big number but a more reasonable one.

I don't mind to talk in the void. At all. Probably I'll kept my personal mastodon instance for long. But my concern is about keeping this https://jvm.social server running. Does it worth it? Will Mastodon explode at some time to become, at least for tech people, a good place to talk?

I highly appreciate people that are PAYING WITH HIS MONEY this server but probably we could get a free server (yes, there are) and run it at no cost (well, this cool jvm.social domain it's also expensive compared with .com or .gov names). Maybe it won't be so fast, so extensible but... do we need it?

I really would like to hear some opinions about this topic.

ℹ️ Some updates from the server side:

🙏 The usual monthly reminder: This server is supported by individual contributors who help with small amount of money to it.

🔝 Thank you, thank you very much to @vmj @dgomezg @tonivade @hawkesnest @petrovicky for your contributions. This server runs because of you, no just me.

I've just upload invoices from April: 12.66€ for AWS and 8.23€ for Hetznet.As always, you can check every donation and expenses in out OpenCollective page: https://opencollective.com/dashboard/jvm-social

📰 I've just upgrade the mastodon instance to latest version (also the operating system kernel so I rebooted the server -sorry for that 2 minutes downtime-) and also changed the limit for posts from the default 500 chars to 2500. Why? Because I can 😃

Tell me what do you thing about that change.

And the usual monthly (or bi-monthly) reminder:

ℹ️ This server is supported by individual contributors who help with small amount of money to it.

🙏 Thank you, thank you very much to @vmj @dgomezg @tonivade @hawkesnest @petrovicky for your contributions. This server runs because of you, no just me.

I've just upload invoices from February and March: 14.97€ + 12.35€ for AWS and 8.23€ * 2 for Hetznet. 31.22€ still in the account. That goes down quickly.

Check it out at https://opencollective.com/jvm-social/transactions

Mastodon server updated to latest 4.3.7.

Also operating system upgraded

Preparing server for upgrade... I'll start at 15:00 UTC and it should take longer than 10m

Sorry for the spam, bit I think it's worth to mention this:

This year it's the 30th Java Anniversary. I am member of the Madrid Java User Group and we're working on JMad (https://jmad.madridjug.es/), a openspace/unconference to be celebrated next May 17th in Madrid.

There's a small fee to cover lunch and venue.

If you live in Madrid, there are no excuses for you. If you come from outside I guess you'll enjoy it.

Come to celebrate with us!

Server updated to latest 4.3.3.

Server software also updated.

And server also rebooted, that never do harm from time to time.

Maybe I can try and get some statistics to show you how the server is used, how many users are active. I'll check it later

For now, I've notice there's a server update available so as always I'll try to apply it on my own personal server and then to this one.

So if everything goes fine, expect a server downtime of 15 minutes in 1 hour or so.

Monthly message from your SysOp 😃 (as I've just added invoices to https://opencollective.com/jvm-social/ )

This month expenses has been 8.23€ for the Hetzner hosting and 13.62€ for the AWS S3+Route53 services. You can check all expenses and invoices in the previous link.

After all payments get satisfied, there will be ~44€ remaining.

Thank you to all contributors and if you are not, please consider to support the server maintenance

I wonder if it's worth to open a conversation about the server future

Happy xmas everybody!
🎄🎅🎄🎅🎄🎅🎄🎅🎄🎅

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WM7M7zSMJcw

(Coming to you from the 70s in the best xmas song ever!)

For your info: from now on I'll post here the expenses and balance when I add any payment.

So, after the 60,32 for annual domain payment, I've just added:

11,80€ for Hetznet hosting
12,54€ for AWS services (S3 and Route53)

After these two payments, the remaining money will be 21,91€

Remember you can check everything at:

https://opencollective.com/jvm-social/expenses

Server hardware upgraded.

And also upgraded mastodon software to latest 4.3.1 version.

Enjoy!

I'm going to shutdown the server in a while to rescale it.

Right now hosted in Hetzner, the current instance type is no longer supported -and we could stay as it is- but the upgrade will give us better performance at lower price so, why not?

I'm going to assure it's like that, doing a backup and all those things and in about 1h I'll upgrade. 🤞

@hawkesnest I agree with your point about big server. And no, I wouldn't like to have a only suscription server but as I said, I'd like this to be community conducted and I guess that could be an alternative if most of people wants it.

About incentives.. what ideas do you have in mind?. Maybe some presents (mug, tshirt, something like that) for people who help more?. Maybe just announcements what somebody helps?.

Thank you for your opinions!

Just one point to keep in mind: We've just paid the domain and the monthly cost is not so big so in the worst case I'll be a good guy and I'll keep the server up and running at least for two months in the case we decide to shut it down. That way all users could migrate to other servers.

And to be clear: I don't want it. The other day in an informal conversation I told some friends that for me the hardest part of running the server is asking for charity every month.

We've just get a 50€ donation from Kai. I don't know who is but THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU!

Anyway, I would like to start the conversation about how we (really) want to maintain the server in a sustaible way.

Maybe just it doesn't have enough value for all of you and it doesn't deserve to be up, I don't know. Or maybe somebody could think in doing a paid-subscription-only server.

I really don't know and I believe in the community so, what do you think?

Hello friends!

I've just paid 60,32€ for the jvm.social domain renovation (2024-2025), but there's only 48,09€ on account (check https://opencollective.com/jvm-social/ )

How should we, as collective, manage this?

And, the usual reminder: this server is maintained by volunteers but it cost some money to keep the infrastrucure up and running.

You can see all transactions, payments and incomes at https://opencollective.com/jvm-social

Right now we only have 51€ and the domain renewal (50€) is in just one month.

So any colaboration is more than welcome!