Account Types
Permissible Hachyderm account types and features, with an account FAQ.
Hachyderm generalizes accounts into one of two account types for moderation:
Specialized accounts are, broadly, any account where the account is not
for the purpose of an individual user who represents themselves on the platform.
Some examples of specialized accounts include, but aren’t limited to: novelty
accounts, bot accounts, corporate accounts, event accounts, project accounts, and so on.
For specialty accounts: we recognize and have rules around some. If
an account is not a user account and not one of the recognized specialized
account types below, then it is not an account type permitted on this
server. If you are interested in creating an account that is not
a user account or a recognized specialized account type, then you need to
reach out to us at admin@hachyderm.io.
Unrecognized specialized accounts will be removed. Recognized account
types that do not follow the rules of their account type will be
moderated as needed.
Note: The Hachyderm Moderation Team does not try to proactively determine your account type.
In most cases, unless you’ve reached out to us via admin@hachyderm.io,
then the first time we encounter your account is when it has been reported for a rules violation
based on your perceived account type. In general, unless we see a discrepancy that indicates otherwise,
we will moderate based on that perceived type.
For all account types: username parking is prohibited on this server.
Please only create an account that is in active use, even if only
lurking. Accounts that appear to be “parked” will be suspended.
User Accounts
User accounts are also referred to as General Accounts, which are
briefly described on our General Accounts page.
Similar to all other accounts, General Accounts must follow server rules.
There are some exceptions that would result in General Accounts being moderated more strictly:
- Accounts Causing Confusion
- Influencer Accounts
Please review the below sections for details about each of the exceptions
Accounts Causing Confusion
If your account has habitual posts that result in confusion about the
purpose of the account, your account could be subject to moderation.
It’s recommended that you review the list of Recognized Specialized Account Categories
and the list of Disallowed Specialized Account Categories
to confirm that a significant portion of your posts don’t fall into these categories.
In addition, if you are an individual user then you shouldn’t
have a username or an about page that might indicate that you are a
company, project, or other form of specialized account. As a
specific example, if you have an account name like MyUserCompany
or MyPodcast, then you will be considered that specialized account
type based on name or about page and be bound by those rules.
As always, our group of volunteer moderator will always do their best to abide
by the Moderator Covenant.
Influencer Accounts = Large Userbase Accounts
Anyone who has more than 10K followers on an existing platform is
what we refer to as an Influencer Account. The only special rule here is
that we request that you reach out to us in advance at
admin@hachyderm.io before migrating
as we will likely need to assist with the migration to prevent
follows getting “stuck”, etc.
Specialized Accounts
The common rules for all specialized account types are:
- Your username and display name must clearly indicate what you are.
This means for companies, OSS projects, community events, podcasts, newsletters, etc.
then the username must match the company / project name. For most
other account types this means “describe what you are” via username,
e.g. “CuratedTechJobPosts”. - You must be verified with your company, project, etc. page.
If your company, project, newsletter, etc. has a web page, then
that web page must be verified on your profile. - All specialized accounts are welcome to become verified with Hachyderm.
Guiding Principles for All Specialized Accounts
Similar to the way that Don’t Be A Dick is the guiding principle for the user
accounts, with other rules calling out common “Whataboutisms” for that rule,
specialized accounts also have three main guiding principles.
We don’t want a digital shouting match on Hachyderm.
What does this mean? Essentially, it means we recognize that some of the motivation
behind creating highly repetitive posts is because Entity A posts N times,
so Entity B posts M times to be visible over Entity A. And so on. The result is a posting
race so that an entity’s posts can be “heard” above the “cacophony” of other posts.
The goal of some of the rules and restrictions we impose on specialized account types is to curtail
a discordant symphony of competition that drowns out collaboration and connection.
We don’t want to host an ad server.
The goal of the remaining rules and restrictions that we impose on specialized account
types is to prevent hosting an abundance of ad and marketing focused content.
The world is plastered in ads, but we believe what is needed and craved is connection
and collaboration. With Hachyderm, we seek to nurture a space where these can thrive.
The goal of rules related to this principle is not to make it so our accounts that
have services and ideas they may also be selling unable to interact on our platform.
Instead, it is our hope and design that accounts this is relevant to reimagine how
they can interact with our community in a way that will foster connection and
collaboration with Hachydermians.
We want community consent to be the default.
There is a lot of content on the internet that can be either harmful or fun, depending on
its frequency and presentation. Bots, newsletters, and so on are execellent examples
of this: having a bot respond with “honk” when summoned can get a laugh. A bot that
auto-responds with gas prices when you mention certain keywords is not. When we are
moderating specialized accounts, and drafting policies around them, the goal is to
put that account type in alignment with user consent so that people in our community can
effortlessly opt into and out of the content as often as each person requires.
This doesn’t mean that you can’t post about what is relevant to your account type.
This does mean we ask you do so in a way that engages with humans the way you’d wish
to be interacted with.
These principles are outlined further in our Specialized Account Expectations. Some specialized accounts
need to agree to the Specialized Account Expectations as part of account creation; others, only if they
become verified.
Recognized Specialized Account Categories
- Corporate - For businesses, companies, and similar. Corporate accounts:
- Events - For community events, including conferences and meetups.
- Projects - For Open Source Projects.
- Curated - These can be accounts that are re-posting / hosting other content, for example a curated
newsletter, or for individuals that are creating and hosting their own content. Examples of curated
content can include, but aren’t limited to: newsletters, podcasts, and streamers.
- Automated - Most commonly, but not exclusively, bot accounts. Any posts that are programmatic and/or
scheduled in nature.
- Hybrid - This is when an account falls under more than one category. Typically, but not exclusively, this is
companies, events, projects, etc. making use of automated posts. In this case, the account must adhere to all
the rules for the different types they house.
Of the above, only the corporate accounts are invite-only / require approval. That said,
we do recommend that all specialized accounts reach out to us prior to creating an account so we may assist with
the expectation setting for your account type.
Disallowed Specialized Account Categories
The following are disallowed as general content on the server, thus are
also disallowed as a dedicated account type.
- NSFW / 18+ - This is mostly due to our need to be able to comply with 18+, which
isn’t in the Mastodon tooling at this time. (See our Sexual Content Policy for more information.)
- Fundraising - No accounts can fundraise on Hachyderm.
- Unofficial company / corporate accounts - As this account type is invite only, unapproved
accounts will be banned.
- Unrecognized specialized account - Essentially if you are not a regular user, and not one of the
explicitly allowed types, you should reach out to admin@hachyderm.io
prior to making an account.
Frequently Asked Questions
Below are the FAQ for all Hachyderm accounts.
Can I post about my company?
Yes. Posting about your company is different from a corporate account. Feel
free to say whatever you want about your company.
Can I post about my project?
Yes. Posting about your project is different from an open source account. Feel
free to say whatever you want about your project.
Can I create a bot account?
Not without working directly with the moderators.
Can I create an anonymous account?
Yes. However, we do not want a single person to operate a high number of
accounts.
We understand the importance of being anonymous from a security, gender,
safety, and mental health perspective.
Can I create multiple accounts?
Yes. Within reason. We expect you to use your best judgement in not flooding
our servers. We understand you might need more than one account. However, it is
not a free for all. We understand security, gender, safety, and mental health,
and safe space from work are all reasons to create multiple and anonymous
accounts.
Can I create accounts for pets, characters, or imaginary friends?
We prefer if you didn’t. We are trying to build a curated network of
professionals on Hachyderm and would encourage you to move these accounts to
another instance.
1 - Specialized Account Expectations
Formerly referred to as the Corporate Covenant. We’ve rebranded the name, as more accounts other than corporations must adhere to these expectations, but have preserved a lot of the original intent.
The following account types should adhere to the expectations as part of signing up
for Hachyderm:
- All specialized accounts that fall under the definition of a:
- All specialized accounts that wish to be Verified
- All Corporate Accounts for Nivenly Trade Members
Expectations for Specialized Accounts
If you are a corporate account, or you are a specialized account that is going to be verified,
we need you to understand and adhere to our guiding principles in addition to the rules governing
your account type.
1. Be a Hachydermian: Fines Doubled In Work Zone
We expect you to set the bar for what it means to be a Hachydermian, and the
rules apply extra to you.
I agree to be a steward and role model in the Hachyderm community. I
understand that my presence as a specialized account implies the rules will be more
strictly applied to me than normal accounts.
The Hachyderm community is a diverse community comprised of many people with
many economic beliefs and situations.
For companies in particular: We expect you to have a mature understanding of
various economic structures around the world, and find a strong balance in your
position as a corporation.
In the Hachyderm community, you will find strong capitalists and even anti-capitalists.
We expect you to consider these different perspectives while creating content
on Hachyderm.
As a specialized account, both our rules, and the rules
governing your account type, apply more to you than to the average user.
This means that the consequences of a rule violation applies more to you than others.
In other words, your “fines will be doubled” if you end up violating our rules.
We will warn you first that you have violated a guiding principle, and if it
continues, then we will ask you to leave.
Ultimately, you are setting the bar for Hachyderm users, the exclusive corporate
accounts, as well as other specialized accounts.
2. Be Who You Want To Work With
We expect you to do unto the community as you would have done unto you.
“Create the market you would want to shop at”.
I agree to build a market that I would want to shop at. I agree to set the
bar for having world-class engagement on Hachyderm.
We find value in drawing the analogy to forced advertising at the gas station.
As a gas station owner, forced messaging makes sense because of the higher
return on advertising.
As a gas station customer, there is nothing more annoying than being forced to
listen to an ad while pumping gas.
We want people to want to shop at your gas station, which means you need to
consider their experience first.
We have high expectations for our community filling their cars with your
metaphorical gas.
3. Say It Once: “The Wikipedia” policy
Measuring spam is hard. We expect you to stay away from repetitive content.
I agree to share new content and do my best to prevent repetitive content. I
understand that words can be changed but messaging can remain consistent. I
agree to only share my message once.
We don’t have time to chase you around.
We find value in what Wikipedia calls Use our own words.
The best practice is to research the most reliable sources on the topic and
summarize what they say in your own words.
We understand that while technically not repeating the exact same words, you can
deliver the same message.
We expect you to say your message once, and not repeat the same message time
and time again.
We are explicitly trying to avoid the “cron job” effect that we see on Twitter
with promotional accounts.
When in doubt, craft new words and form a new opinion. Otherwise, it likely is
repetitive content.
In short, we hold you to a high bar to be “the first of your kind”, otherwise we
expect you to be contributing to the existing resource when applicable.
We understand that this impacts some specialized account types more so than others. We expect
all specialized accounts to use good judgement when they need to approach this rule.
We don’t want Hachyderm to turn into a promotional recycling center. We want you to be
either sharing new content, or mentioning the original source and adding to it.
4. “We Know It When We See It” Policy
Ultimately, the community comes first and the community’s response to your
content will be our guiding light.
I understand that policies are difficult to enforce. If it is made obvious to
me that Hachyderm is no longer benefiting from my presence, I will politely
step down as a specialized account and move to another server.
If your content becomes “invasive” or “unwanted” or seems to be causing
problems, we will ask you to move your account to another server.
Basically, we look at “bad actors” like we look at pornography. We know it when
we see it. We reserve the right to ask you to leave at any time.
5. Mods are Volunteers, Not Hall Monitors
Your account needs to be a win for everyone involved, including our
moderators.
I understand that it is my job to self-moderate. If moderation from Hachyderm
is involved, we have failed twice. First in self-moderation, and 2nd in
violating a specific policy.
Ideally, a specialized account should be helping to keep bad actors out while also
setting an extremely high bar of what it means to be a good community member.
If at any time the Hachyderm moderators are spending more time chasing your
account around than our community is getting out of your presence, it’s time to
go.
Our moderators are here to keep the community safe.
2 - Specialized Account Verification with Hachyderm
How to become a verified, specialized, account with Hachyderm.
Who should verify?
Currently, only a subset of our specialized accounts are required to verify. That said, we recommend
that all specialized accounts (influencer accounts on a case-by-case basis) go through the verification
process so that Hachyderm users know that your account is officially recognized and that you’ve
agreed to the Specialized Account Expectations.
Required and optional verification
While we recommend all accounts that are not user accounts apply to be verified with us, only the following
are required to be verified:
Accounts that will likely want to consider being verified:
- Community Events
- Open Source Projects
- Any account that may appear similar to a corporate account (but is not). This may include:
- Some of the non-profits we’ve welcomed on our instance
- Some of our Influencer Accounts (though not all)
- Note that verification is not open to general users at this time.
- In general, this is only if your personal brand or posting style could be conflated
with one of the recognized specialized account types. If
you’re using Hachyderm as a general user and happen to have
a large following, you likely would not want to be verified
at this time.
When to verify?
This process was launched in February 2023. We ask existing accounts that need to be verified to
do so by the end of March 2023.
What does a verified account look like?
All specialized accounts that have been verified by the Hachyderm moderation team will have a verified link pointing to community.hachyderm.io/approved in their profile links. This link should be titled “Approved” on the account bio:
The Application Process
Steps to getting approved
This is only for the specialized accounts.
We are not accepting request for individual users at this time.
Part 1: Get Pre-Approved
To get started, we will create an issue to track the full process from the creation of your account to the completion of the approval process.
- Read the Specialized Account Expectations
- Open a “Specialized Account Approval” issue from our Community Issue Tracker
- Include your agreement to the Specialized Account Expectations in the GitHub issue
- Be patient (we are group of volunteer mods and will reach out as soon as we can)
- We make a decision
- If you are not approved, we will provide a reason and close the GitHub issue.
- If you are approved, you can now create your account and then move on to Part 2 below
- Note: you should leave the GitHub issue open.
Do not pre-emptively put the Approval URL in your profile metadata.
Due to the way that verification works, Mastodon will only try to verify you
once per server when you add a URL. This means that Hachyderm’s instance will
only verify the URL when you add it, prior to it being approved, and will not re-check.
You will be prompted to add the URL at the appropriate step below so the URL is live
when Hachyderm checks.
If you’ve pre-emptively added the field to the account profile, you’ll need to re-save after the
approval URL is live with your account listed in Part 2 below.
Part 2: Finishing account setup
- Ensure you’re already verified with your official domain
- Do not remove the reference link. Moderators will be using this during their validation process.
- We will add your verification tag under the appropriate header in the approved file. (Please be patient, we are a group of volunteers and will update as soon as we can.)
- We will update the GitHub issue when this is done.
- Using the verification steps, add the following to your profile metadata
- Verify that you can see the appropriate field highlighted in green and the green check mark
- Once you have added the above to your profile metadata and verification is successful, please update and close the GitHub issue.
- Do not remove the approved link once you have completed the process. This field lets
our users know you’re an approved account and will prevent your account from being reported as an unapproved account.
- Optional, but recommened: Make sure to share that you’re an approved account, and include that that means you’ve agreed to the Specialized Account Expectations!
3 - Bot and Post Automation
For all types of automated and scheduled content.
If you are running a bot account and/or plan on making use of post scheduling - this
article is for you!
Overview
- Automated posts and bot accounts
- Posting rules for automated content
- Posting rules and behavior restrictions for bots
- All bots must be verified with Hachyderm
- Where applicable, accounts should be verified
with their relevant domain(s).
A bit about post automation
Not all posting automation is bot, or bot-like, in nature. Many specialized accounts make
use of post scheduling to help communicate with their intended userbase.
This can include, but not be limited to, sign up windows for an event that must
be done in a specific time frame, automated posts when a blog is updated, and so on.
The line between automated posts and bot posts is a thin one, and mostly dependent on
whether a human composed a post (whether it is scheduled for now or later) and whether or not
that post is intended to repeat (the “say it once” policy on the Specialized Account Expectations).
As with many of our rules on Hachyderm, the rules and regulations for bot and automated posting
is about their impact on the server. We want that impact to be positive and non-invasive. It is
our belief that collaboration thrives where there is genuine connection. Genuine connection can
happen via bot and automated posts, but cannot thrive if those posts become invasive or compete with
each other negatively.
When we enforce the rules and regulations on bots and automated content, as outlined in the next
section, we do so with the goal of increasing the connected, collaborative nature of the
Hachyderm community.
Posting Rules
All accounts that make use of automated and/or scheduled posts must adhere to the following:
- There is an upper limit of 5 curated/scheduled/automated posts per day. Lower is better.
- Posts cannot violate other rules
- This includes server rules disallowing spam, fundraising, NSFW/18+ content (et al)
- Hybrid accounts, those that make use of scheduled posts and are also another specialized type,
are bound to all sets of rules for their combined, hybrid, account type.
- Posts cannot violate the Specialized Account Expectations
- There is one exception: automated posts can skirt the “say it once” policy, unless it
becomes spam-worthy (community discretion). So, if you need to post about your event,
blog, etc. and stay within the total number of posts per day, this is fine.
Accounts that violate the above may be limited or suspended.
Bot Specific Rules
Account Configuration
- All bot accounts must be verified with Hachyderm, which means they agree to the Specialized Account Expectations.
- All bots must select the bot checkbox in their profile settings. (Open image in new window to enlarge.)
- Bots are required to put the
#hachybots hashtag in all posts
to allow users to opt into, or out of, bot posts.
Restrictions on Behavior
All bot accounts, and bot-like posts, must respect consent (i.e. opt-in). This means:
- Bots may respond directly to posts that they have been tagged in.
- Reactionary bots may only be triggered / “summoned” by posts that include their handle.
- But they cannot “doom spiral”. Essentially: they cannot continue to respond to every response in
a thread, because they were tagged once, and thus auto-tagged in all subsequent responses.
- Bots cannot respond to hashtags, keywords, etc. without being tagged - e.g. bots that respond to user posts based on keywords and similar.
- Bots designed to consume, use, store, or otherwise handle data (even public data) can only do so with consent (opt-in).
- Bots designed for fun can skirt the “say it once” policy, unless it becomes spam-worthy (community discretion). So, if your bot only responds with “honk”, and only when summoned, this is fine.
Bot accounts that violate any of the above may be limited or banned.
4 - Corporate Accounts
Who should make corporate accounts, how to make them, and their rules and restrictions.
Overview
What is a Corporate Account
Corporate accounts are specialized accounts that apply to those running accounts for businesses
and business-like entities. This can include certain types of projects, conferences / events,
and non-profit organizations as well as traditional for-profit companies of any size.
Some corporate accounts may be affiliated with Nivenly Trade Members, although this is not
a requirement. (Clarification: this is a requirement we removed prior to the 1 Mar 2023 launch.)
For a quick summary of Nivenly, please see the end of this article.
Rules and restrictions
Corporate accounts:
In order to apply to create a corporate account, please email us at admin@hachyderm.io.
We will go over the rules and expectations with you and help you be successful interacting with
members of our community.
Pricing
Corporate account standard pricing is tiered based on size and is as follows:
- <25 employees: $650/year
- 25-49 employees: $1000/year
- 50-99 employees: $1500/year
- 100-149 employees: $2000/year
- 150-999 employees: $2500/year
Entities with 1000+ employees or more than 50,000 followers will have customized High
Volume pricing based on resource usage. If you believe your entity would fall in this range,
please mention that you will need High Volume Pricing when you email us at admin@hachyderm.io.
If you are a small startup (<25 employees) and $650/year would be a burden: please still
reach out to us! We want to help the industry as much as possible and work with you.
Addenda
The Nivenly Foundation
The Nivenly Foundation will facilitate Hachyderm’s governance as well as support other open source projects.
The governance model will be democratic in nature, and all Nivenly Trade members will be given a vote in member level elections.
For more information, see nivenly.org.
How to become a Nivenly Trade Member
If you are interested in starting the conversation about the Nivenly Foundation and Trade
Membership: please email us at info@nivenly.org.
Current corporate accounts
Listed here for historical purposes. Please note that as of 1 Mar 2023 all corporate accounts
are verified / approved with Hachyderm.
5 - Curated Accounts and Content
Curated accounts are accounts that post content on a regular basis that
the account owner(s) have previously vetted. This can include, but is not
limited to:
- Job postings for a specific profession, industry, or from a particular source
- Newsletter or newsletter-like postings relevant to a particular profession or industry
- Podcasts or other streaming focused content
- Conference aggregators for CFPs, tickets, sign-up date(s), etc.
Restrictions on behavior
Curated posts, whether they are a dedicated account type or an account that features
them prominently, have restrictions on this server.
- Curated accounts must be “on topic”. To put it another way, they must be directly relevant
to the tech industry.
- Curated accounts must follow the same posting rules as automated posts.
Notably this includes:
- There is an upper limit of 5 curated/scheduled/automated posts per day. Lower is better.
- Posts cannot violate other rules
- This includes server rules disallowing spam, fundraising, NSFW/18+ content (et al)
- Hybrid accounts, those that make use of curated content and are also another specialized type,
are bound to all sets of rules for their combined, hybrid, account type.
- Posts cannot violate the Specialized Account Expectations
- Similar to bots, curated accounts must use the
#hachygrator hashtag (“Hachyderm” + “Aggregator”) in their posts to allow users to opt-in or opt-out.
- Curated accounts must be verified with Hachyderm
- Where applicable, accounts should be verified
with their relevant domain(s).
6 - General Accounts
For the vast majority of Hachyderm users:
And most of all:
Have fun.
7 - Influencer Accounts
In short, we welcome all influencers and have an open door policy for any large
influencer account who would like to make Hachyderm a home.
Overview
- We welcome influencer accounts
- If you have a following of more than 10K on any platform, please reach
out to us at admin@hachyderm.io before
announcing your account to your followers.
- You may want to verify with Hachyderm, depending on your content.
We believe that all influencers should be free to promote their brand and their
content on our site, however we have a high bar with regard to product
marketing.
We draw the line between “personal brand” and “corporate account”. The latter
would need to adhere to our corporate account policy.
In short, if you are representing yourself, then you should be fine to self promote on
Hachyderm. If your content is close to one of our other account types, and potentially
not only your own personal brand and/or there’s high overlap between your personal brand
being a “brand-brand”, please reach out to
us at admin@hachyderm.io so we can see if verification
would be beneficial for your account. (We do not have this process open to general user
accounts.)
Tech Twitch Streamers
Twitch streamers are welcome!
We’ve had a couple of instances where accounts with large followers
needed assistance with their account migrations. Early in the Twitter
migration, Ian Coldwater joined our
community and with them brought roughly 600 new users in less than an hour.
This unexpected rise in traffic took our team of volunteers off guard and ended
up slowing our service down for the evening. (With our infrastructure migrated
off The Watertower and into more resilient architecture, this should no longer
be a concern.)
The other main instance is when Scott Hanselman
migrated over from his previous Mastodon home. Due to the large number of followers
that came with him, we had tickets opened on both our own Community Issue Tracker
and on Mastodon’s issues, to help us re-prompt remote servers that had not responded
to the initial migration request.
So essentially, we want to make sure that when you migrate over that we’re aware
so we are prepared if we need to do anything for backend processes or potentially
re-prompt remote servers (i.e. neither Hachyderm nor your original Mastodon home server)
to migrate followers if they become stuck during your migration.
As a rule, if you have more than 10K followers on an existing platform, we ask
that you reach out to us directly at admin@hachyderm.io
or via the Nivenly Discord (if you’re already in there) before announcing your arrival
to your followers so we can prepare to assist as needed.
8 - Open Source Project and Community Event Accounts
This section is for anyone who is interested in creating an account
specifically for an open source project and/or community driven event.
If you are a maintainer of a project or event organizer and are
representing yourself, this page does not apply to you. For example:
I, Kris Nóva, am a maintainer of Aurae.
This documentation only applies to me if I were attempting to create a 2nd
account in addition to my primary personal account that would be specifically
for “Aurae”.
This documentation does not apply to my personal account, where I would be free
to talk about Aurae as I wish.
Open Source Projects and Community Events
We welcome open source and collaborative projects to create accounts on
Hachyderm. We also welcome community events to create accounts on Hachyderm.
If your project is an extension of, or resembles, a corporate account, it
is bound by the Corporate Account rules and restrictions.
If your event is a corporate event and/or meetup, it is also bound by those
same rules and restrictions.
If you are unsure if your project and/or event would be considered corporate,
please reach out to us at admin@hachyderm.io.
Understanding Open Source Projects and Community Events
The following are the types of projects that are welcome to come and go from
Hachyderm as they please.
- ✔️ Open source software projects with MIT, Apache 2.0, GPL,
Creative Commons or similar licenses.
- ✔️ Open collaborative projects such as The Gutenberg
Project or collaborative wiki style projects
like Wikipedia and
Wikimedia.
- ✔️ Community driven events, open organizations, and volunteer
driven events like FOSDEM.
- ✔️ Open source organizations such as
Matrix.
OSS projects and industry events that are company-like or business-like in their
implementation will be considered “corporate” (in the account sense) and require
a corporate account. They will also be bound by the
account rules and restrictions for that account type. Criteria that would meet this type:
- Projects that are a product / service of a parent entity that would meet the
criteria for a corporate account or
events that are for a specific company or company-like organization or
events for a specific product / service of that company or company-like organization. - Projects with either a single sponsor or owner that is a company or is company-like / business-like or
events that meet this definition. - Projects that resemble paid services for a company or company-like / business-like entity or
events that meet this defniition. - Projects that have “free tier” and “paid tier” models that resemble company-like
or business-like implementation.
Some specific examples that would would not fall under the OSS project / event
definition (in terms of account type) and would require a corporate account:
- ✖️ Large trade organizations and governing
bodies such as the CNCF or Cloud
Foundry or their subsequent
projects such as Istio or
Helm.
- ✖️ Product ecosystem event like AWS re:Invent
- ✖️ Open source projects with a single corporate
sponsor/owner such as Google’s Go Programming language
and HashiCorp’s Terraform.
- ✖️ Open source projects with structured sponsorship
models that resemble paid services. Some examples include unlocking
essential features, increasing quotas, and so forth via donation or
payment tiers.
- ✖️ “up-sell” or “upgrade to pro” or “free trial” model
projects that resemble a paid service such as pfSense Community
Edition or Wolfram
Alpha.
What is financial bias?
Financial bias is defined as “the ability for a specific vendor, project, or
organization to pay for a competitive advantage” or sometimes referred to as
“pay-to-play” vendor spaces.
Why do we care about financial bias?
We acknowledge the system that we’re in: projects and events need money to run
and continue to have great work and results. What we are specifically concerned
with is when financial bias can create unhealthy releationships. In particular,
financial bias can taint the relationship between a project and/or event and its
intended goals. As that grows and spreads, this in turn drives unhealthy
relationships between the people building/running the project and/or event
and the very people they want to bond, collaborate, and share with.
Our goal with the guidance, rules, and restrictions that we have in place
for these and other account types is to protect our community by promoting
and nurturing the conditions that allow healthy relationships to thrive by
default.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I create an account for my event? Like DevopsDays?
Yes, the goal is to support community focused events. If the goal of the
event is the community, then this is the correct account type for your event.
If your event is business oriented, or for businesses to network with each
other (e.g. what is sometimes referred to as a tradeshow), your event will
need a corporate account.
What about DevopsDays for my specific city?
Yes. As long as your subsidiary account isn’t repeating the same content as the
parent account. We expect each account to have relatively independent content.
Can I create a support/help/fan/parody account?
No. Accounts like “Linux Tips” or “Kubernetes Memes” are not in alignment with
our mission to create a curated group of professionals. We aim to have accounts
that represent real people.
Can I create an account if a similar one already exists?
No. We want to have one account for each project. We do not want to have
“Wikipedia tips” and “Wikipedia facts” as separate accounts. We think that
collaboration of the same account should be shared at the project level. You
should join the project and ask for access to the Mastodon account.
Can I create a bot account for our open source project?
No. We know it is fun to automate pull requests, build status, and more. However,
we try to keep our content based around real words written by real people. That said,
you are welcome to include some of that data in your project’s account posts, it just
can’t be dedicated to only publishing that type of content.