Hey everyone, hope you’re doing well. For some time, lemmy’s been struggling with donations. For all these years, the lemmy devs, like them or hate them; have been building the software that powers the entirety of the forumverse (that’s what i’m calling it, fuck you) so if you have even a dollar/euro/peso/whatever to give, it would be greatly appreciated (by the lemmy devs, and all instance admins!)
Good day to y’all :D
crossposted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/29579005
An open source project the size of Lemmy needs constant work to manage the project, implement new features and fix bugs. Dessalines and I work full-time on these tasks and more. As there is no advertising or tracking, all of our work is funded through donations. Unfortunately the amount of donations has decreased to only 2000€ per month. This leaves only 1000€ per developer, which is not enough to pay my bills. With the current level of donations I will be forced to find another job, and drastically reduce my contributions to Lemmy. To avoid this outcome and keep Lemmy growing, I ask you to please make a recurring donation:
Liberapay | Ko-fi | Patreon | OpenCollective | Crypto
If you want more information before donating, consider the comparison with Reddit. It began as startup funded by rich investors. The site is managed by corporate executives who over time have become more and more disconnected from normal users. Their main goal is to make investors happy and to make a profit. This leads to user-hostile decisions like firing the employee responsible for AMAs, blocking third-party apps and more. As Reddit is a single website under a single authority, it means all users need to follow the same rules, including ridiculous ones like censoring the name “Luigi”.
Lemmy represents a new type of social media which is the complete opposite of Reddit. It is split across many different websites, each with its own rules, and managed by normal people who actually care about the users. There is no company and no profit motive. Much of the work is carried out by volunteer admins, mods and posters, who contribute out of enthusiasm and not for money. For users this is great as there is no advertising nor tracking, and no chance of takeover by a billionaire. Additionally there are no builtin political or ideological restrictions. You can use the software for any purpose you like, add your own restrictions or scrutinize its inner workings. Lemmy truly belongs to everyone.
Dessalines and I work fulltime on Lemmy to keep up with all the feature requests, bug reports and development work. Even so there is barely enough time in the day, and no time for a second job. Previously I sometimes had to rely on my personal savings to keep developing Lemmy for you, but that can’t go on forever. We partly rely on NLnet for funding, but they only pay for development of new features, and not for mandatory maintenance work. The only available option are user donations. To keep it viable donations need to reach a minimum of 5000€ per month, resulting in a modest salary of 2500€ per developer. If that goal is reached Dessalines and I can stop worrying about money, and fully focus on improving the software for the benefit of all users and instances. Please use the link below to see current donation stats and make your contribution! We especially rely on recurring donations to secure the long-term development and make Lemmy the best it can be.
Just to be clear here, you retract that statement about transgender people? Do you actually believe that trans rights are human rights and not “a wedge issue for the left” or somesuch? Like it or not, that single statement of yours turned away a lot of people who could look past your Marxism-Leninism, including other Marxists like Hexbears, so making the your opinion clear on the record could go a long way.
Sure I retract everything I said in that private message, it was posted without much thinking and certainly not meant for publication. Not sure what “trans rights” are exactly, but obviously human rights apply to everyone including transgender people.
…my guy… It still sounds you’re just sorry you got caught.
So let’s cut the bullshit. Do you still think “the transphobic topic is clearly promoted by the bourgeoisie”? Do you think trans women should be allowed to compete as the women they are in olympic sports? Do you still call them “biological men”?
Even more to the point: Should trans people be treated by everyone else and the society at large (yes, including a potentially socialist one) as the gender they identify themselves?
Do you also perform this kind of background check for every product you buy in the supermarket? Or is this level of scrutiny reserved for open source developers that give software away for free? Fact is that none of this is related to Lemmy development in the slightest. Would you be happier if I left Lemmy to stagnate so users go back to Reddit?
This is a horrid look for ya.
“Sure I might be transphobic. But other people are bad too! Checkmate!”
I see. Well, I think your answer really speaks for itself. Honestly mate, it would have been better not to say anything, instead of trying to weasel out of it by this “I’m sorry you saw me write that stuff”. Best of luck to you.
It certainly seals the deal for me to never donate to Lemmy developers.
I had hopes they’d change their mind but I guess not. I know learning your mistakes takes time but it’s been 24 hours and they are still going “I’m not so bad, I’m the good guy! It’s just stupid people are mad at me.”