Trustroots Foundation was dissolved on 24 May 2022. Between July 2022 and March 2024, Trustroots was operated by 3 private people, 2 of them resigned board members. Community members have been intentionally kept in dark about this by people in control.
On 25 January 2024, almost all volunteers were kicked out from Trustroots Github organization.
One of the three people in control, who remained in contact with volunteers, was "fired" by another one.
The remaining 2 people in control write about decentralization, but silence dissent, perform censorship, and concentrate control in their own hands.
On 20 March 2024, Foundation was restored, previous directors removed, and Callum and Kasper are the Board of Directors of Trustroots Foundation now.
As of 7 May 2024, the website still needs to be updated with these changes.
On January 25, 2024, many volunteers were kicked out of Trustroots github organization, some were completely banned. Also, hundreds of issues and pull requests were closed. This was a culmination of 1.5 years of takeover by a small group of people, after the Trustroots Foundation had been dissolved, and the main founder and developer had stopped being active.
To be continued…
20 March 2024 - Trustroots Foundation is restored, the other directors are removed or resign, and Callum and Kasper become the Board of Directors.
3 - 4 February 2024 - Callum publicly claims that Foundation still exists and that he has full support of its directors, doesn't provide sufficient evidence.
31 January 2024 - According to Callum, Robino has been fired
25 - 27 January 2024 - Consolidation of control continues. Callum and Kasper are changing information on Trustroots website, removing volunteering information, and promoting their new project. They also revert recent code improvements.
25 January 2024 - Without notice, almost all volunteers are removed from Github Trustroots organization. Hundreds of issues and pull requests are being closed without explanation, including very valuable ones like accessibility feedback and bug reports.
When people express disagreement with this process, their issues are deleted and they are banned.
2023-09 - 100k members
2023-07 - Robino attempts to update the information about Foundation. But bridging the gap between volunteers and ops seems impossible. The update is too vague, yet it can't get published.
Some minor code improvements can be published thanks to Robino, who occasionally merges them to trustrootsops repository
2023-04 - After merging Trustroots code to trustrootsops repository, Ops remove the information about Foundation dissolution thus avoiding publishing it
Volunteers keep meeting regularly, but there is general feeling of frustration. Ops communicate very little, and allow only very limited improvements. Volunteers one by one stop attending meetings. Lack of agency.
2022-10-05 - Volunteers manage to merge the updated information about Foundation dissolution to trustroots repository master, but Ops refuse to deploy it
2022-10 - Discussions are moved from Slack to Matrix
2022-09 - Trustroots repository is forked into trustrootsops/trustroots by Callum. This repository will be used as a source of truth for production application
2022-08 - Some volunteers want to publish the information on the website that Trustroots Foundation was dissolved, Ops disagree
Ops move Trustroots to a new server hosted by Hetzner Online GmbH, and save it from disappearing
Kasper shares access keys with Callum and later with Robino. They become the Ops
2022-07 - A group of current and former volunteers meets online, and talks about Trustroots future. Kasper and Callum propose to sunset Trustroots, others disagree
2022-06 - Technical difficulties: email is down for several weeks, and also website is down for a couple of days. People start noticing that Trustroots may have troubles.
2022-05-24 - Trustroots foundation is dissolved, probably because annual legal documents weren't submitted. Mikael stops interacting with the project, Kasper remains the only available person with access to technical infrastructure.
2021-07-29 - Kasper leaves Trustroots Board of Directors
2020-10 - 50k members
2018-10-2018-12 - Trustroots Collective in south of Spain
2018-03-14 - Callum leaves Trustroots Board of Directors
2017-07 - Hackathon in Berlin
2015-08 - 10k members
2015-03-13 - Trustroots Foundation is created
2014-12-23 - Trustroots is officially released
2014-12 - Hitchwiki Hackathon in Antalya, Turkey
Mikael, Rémi, Arthur, (...) finalize and test the Trustroots before its official launch
2014-10-25 - First Trustroots members create profile
Mikael and some other people build initial version of Trustroots
2014-08-28 - First commit to Trustroots
2014-02 - BeWelcome holds extraodinary General Assemblies because BoD fell aparat. Also, Welen is discontinued. Conflicts among BoD and developer teams are mentioned as reason. Kasper, Callum, and some of the developers of Welen including Mikael move on to create Trustroots
2013-05-2014-01 - Mikael and some other future Trustroots developers work on new version of BeWelcome called Welen
2013-11-02 - BeWelcome General Assembly - Callum and Kasper are elected to Board of Directors of BeWelcome, Callum becomes Executive Director