Dear Community,
we have amazing news today!
Do you remember that our financial and legal foundation was a big point of conflict? No single person should have to shoulder the legal responsibilities for Belletristica. One solution would have been to found a non-profit organization, but that would have cost time and additional money, not to mention a whole lot of paperwork and dealing with German bureaucracy - yearly. We also have to pay for servers - which gets difficult if a single person handles money. The person could stop their engagement for Belletristica, or the donations stop and one person has to use their personal money!
Previously, we said that we were working on the matter but couldn’t give any details, since we didn’t know if it would work out.
Well, it worked out!
We are excited to introduce haxko to you!
https://haxko.space/ (german only, sorry!)
This non-profit will host Belletristica, which means they will show as the owners in our future impressum and will handle donations. We (the core team) will still own all rights to Belletristica and the main decision mandate over Belles development.
As a non-profit they have access to more thorough and better insurance than a private person. Additionally we minimize the problems that occur if people quit the project in the future. We now just have to find a replacement for the person keeping in contact with haxko instead of building our financial and legal foundation again.
On top of all of that, a non-profit taking donations is far easier to set up.
Of course, this solution didn’t come to us out of nowhere. One of our mods is a founding member of haxko and acted as chairman for a while. They are still friends with the current heads of the non-profit and an active participant in the on-goings of haxko.
What is haxko?
The non-profit is a Hacker- and Makerspace in the area of Mayen-Koblenz (specifically Andernach, Germany), and offers open-door-nights every week alternating between Fridays and Saturdays.
Some of you might think ‘Hackers!?’. But we can assure you that those ones are the friendly kind who hold the principles of privacy and security in high regards. If anything we will most likely find someone there to help us harden the security of our favorite website.
Haxko specializes in handling of and the relationship to digital media, programming, soldering, 3D-printing and a lot more.
Famous projects don’t end at digital/technical topics, though! You will find bookbinding, the crafting of acoustic panels and other craftsmanships there as well.
Belletristica qualifies for a partnership with haxko, because we offer a digitally based cultural and artistic platform and engage in developing young talent. With Lizzy, we also have a tech-fairy already! The partnership is therefore pretty ideal!
What will change because of the cooperation? Not much really!
The ‘High Council’ which is the core team will keep their decision mandate. Haxko will only be allowed to veto future features if they are legally too risky.
Belletristica will of course always stay free. It was Ben’s requirement for us being allowed to take over the website that it will always stay that way. We will still need to hope that voluntary donations will cover the costs for running Belletristica as it was before. Donations will no longer go directly to Belletristica and its maintainers but to haxko, which will pay for the servers. Everything that comes in additionally to the cost coverage will be invested in other non-profit projects of haxko.
If there comes the day we want to quit the partnership with haxko, we will be able to do so. We won’t be held to keeping the partnership for a fixed amount of time. We would need to found our own non-profit then, though, but even if that is hard and will eat up resources, it will always be an exit-strategy. For now we can focus on re-building the website.
The financials:
Of course haxko hopes that Belletristica won’t cost them anything in exchange for shouldering the legal risks. The non-profit is solely financed by membership fees and donations, so we hope you understand that they can’t spend hundreds of Euros each month for us. We are still in the process of figuring out the best agreement on how to make sure none of the two parties draws the short straw with this. We don’t want our community to be obligated to pay anything but don’t want haxko to be in the red because of us either.
This never means anyone has to donate or that anyone has to give more than they can. Belletristica will stay a 100% free platform. We already know of at least one person who will pay what is missing in donations at the end of the month. But of course it would be nice if we could manage to divert this burden.
We are really excited about this partnership! As mentioned above it solves most of our worries regarding insurance and financial safety - and it opens new opportunities for the future! And all of this with just a small compromise.
This now means that the ‘Shattered Throne’ projects stands on solid ground. We have a haven we can aim for, when our world will perish. The waters are still dark and scary, but there is now a lighthouse to show us the way.
Your S.T.-Team
