This patreon page exists mostly at the request of the postActiv community, as they wanted a means by which they could financially support the project (thanks guys!)

What is postActiv?
postActiv is a free software implementation of a microblogging service, available under the GNU AGPLv3. It allows someone to run their own microblogging site akin to Twitter or Facebook, and federate it with other sites also running the same software, or software using the OStatus and ActivityPub standards it does. At the current time, it connects with GNU social, Friendica, Hubzilla, and to a limited degree, Diaspora.

postActiv is a fork of the GNU social software, and so it is compatible with many GNU social plugins, such as the popular Qvitter web interface that provides a site layout very similar to Twitter's. However, it also includes many improvements by myself and other contributors, such as a Redis-based queue handler that is much more efficient, a variety of changes to the way the software handles exceptions and is laid out so it is quicker and also easier to diagnose errors on, and a sensitive content plugin that allows site users to opt out of seeing content labelled as "#nsfw" (or opt into, if you set it up that way)

Why support postActiv?
Well, as much as I could put some platitudes about free software development - and indeed, having software that respects the Four Freedoms as the infrastructure for the internet is important - it basically comes down to the reality of the situation. I have a day job, and housing and food needs like anyone else. Time is, as they say, money, and so presently, postActiv is something I develop in my limited free time. With financial support through your donations, I can give it more attention, as well as offering bounties to encourage other outside development.

How is my money used?
In order of precedence, your donations are used to:

Support the infrastructure used to develop postActiv (server costs, any costs incurred in buying hardware or software, etc)
Support the foundation of feature and bug bounties to stimulate development of features and fixes of bugs that I do not have the time to address myself. This is the means by which I pay external contributors for their contributions.
Support my financial needs so I can spend more time developing postActiv
Any monthly excess after this, is in turn passed on the Free Software Foundation to support other free software projects.

If and when the project exceeds 200$/mo in funding, we will provide monthly posts which break down how the money was used every month. (Prior to that amount it's not worth the time investment to do it every month)

Do I need to support postActiv financially to use it?
Nope! postActiv is free software, and you are never required to pay a cent to use it if you so desire. This patreon page exists for those whom like the postActiv software enough that they wish to financially support it. As a AGPLv3 licensed software, postActiv's codebase will always be freely available for anyone whom wishes to use it.

How do I get postActiv then?
You can see the README information given on our git repository for information about how to grab, install, and configure postActiv.

I have a problem with postActiv, what do I do?
While you can post here and I will try to get to it when I can, only I have access to the patreon page. You're better served posting to the Issues section of our gitlab installation, as the entire team will see it and thus your Issue can be more expediently answered.

If you just have general setup or configuration questions rather than an actual bug or error, you can contact me on the Fediverse (what we call the network of sites connected by postActiv and other compatible software), or ping the users mailing list at users -at- postactiv -dot- com

A final note about contributions
While I appreciate all contributions and thank everyone whom contributes to the project financially, please understand that my time is limited and I cannot implement every single suggestion that people make of the software all at once and as such, your donation is not a gaurantee that any particular function or desired change will be added. I prioritize things based upon how important I feel they are to the project and how quickly I think they can be added. A quick change that offers a great new function is much more likely to be implemented than a change that would require extensive rewrites and isn't as important. Please keep this in mind before donating financially.

As well, if you're not able to support the project financially, but still want to, consider contibuting code to our codebase by submitting a merge request with your additions or changes! That's a great way to help. You can also help out by promoting postActiv to your friends and family.