Changes to the ArchiveTeam tiers on Open Collective
Published on June 3, 2023 by JustAnotherArchivist
Dear ArchiveTeam donors,
Since our Open Collective presence was set up in 2017, it came with two tiers that had specific titles and descriptions of what the donations would be used for: 'Sponsor an Archive Team coder' and 'Sponsor an ArchiveBot pipeline'. A significant part of your generous donations was made under these tiers. However, these use cases did not become reality. Hiring a coder in few-hour chunks, as was mentioned in the project description, is not very realistic or feasible due to system complexity/technical debt and the associated required broad understanding of the codebases, and sufficient hardware for more cost-effective ArchiveBot pipelines has been donated directly. Instead, our other projects, first and foremost the infrastructure for distributed projects, have grown significantly over the past few years, and so have the related expenses. We intend to use past and future donations for these things instead – as well as other expenses related to ArchiveTeam's core goal of rescuing your shit.
We have removed the 'Sponsor an Archive Team coder' and 'Sponsor an ArchiveBot pipeline' tiers. This has the following consequences for those of you who donated under these tiers:
Since our Open Collective presence was set up in 2017, it came with two tiers that had specific titles and descriptions of what the donations would be used for: 'Sponsor an Archive Team coder' and 'Sponsor an ArchiveBot pipeline'. A significant part of your generous donations was made under these tiers. However, these use cases did not become reality. Hiring a coder in few-hour chunks, as was mentioned in the project description, is not very realistic or feasible due to system complexity/technical debt and the associated required broad understanding of the codebases, and sufficient hardware for more cost-effective ArchiveBot pipelines has been donated directly. Instead, our other projects, first and foremost the infrastructure for distributed projects, have grown significantly over the past few years, and so have the related expenses. We intend to use past and future donations for these things instead – as well as other expenses related to ArchiveTeam's core goal of rescuing your shit.
We have removed the 'Sponsor an Archive Team coder' and 'Sponsor an ArchiveBot pipeline' tiers. This has the following consequences for those of you who donated under these tiers:
- Past donations: Our Fiscal Host (Open Source Collective) has advised us that using the existing funds in the way described above, despite the more specific tier descriptions, is okay with them. Nevertheless, it is a significant change, and if you disagree and would like a refund instead, please contact us within 30 days of this update. Donations from the past 120 days can be refunded.
- Future donations: If you had a recurring donation under these tiers, it has been converted to a generic 'custom contribution' automatically upon deletion of the tiers. Your continued support would be greatly appreciated, but if you disagree with the change in use of funds, please get in touch with us or remember to cancel before the next contribution.
To contact us, you can either use the 'Contact' button on Open Collective or ask on IRC (#archiveteam-bs on irc.hackint.org).
Best,
ArchiveTeam
ArchiveTeam