Hello world,
as many of you probably already know, Lemmy is an open source project and its development is funded by donations.
Unfortunately, as is often the case, donations amounts are often going down over time if people are not aware of their necessity. When older users leave the platform they may stop donating, while new users joining will typically not be aware of this and won’t start donating to even things out or even go towards an overall increase in donations.
All of the services provided by our non-profit Fedihosting Foundation are dependent on the development of FOSS platforms, which we can host without paying any licensing or other fees, instead only being required to pay for the infrastructure cost. We are currently investing a small part (€50 each) of the donations we receive in development of Lemmy and Mastodon, but the majority of the donations we receive are used for covering infrastructure costs. We’re currently just about breaking even with the donations we receive, but it’s certainly not enough to cover a large part of Lemmy or other software development costs.
We’re looking to support sustainable software development for all the services we provide and will post similar announcements on our other platforms to promote donations towards the respective development teams in the coming days.
You can find the original announcement by @nutomic@lemmy.ml below:
cross-posted 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.
edit, as this was frequently brought up:
Will donations to Lemmy development go towards the operation of lemmy.ml?
It depends on the donation method used and is limited to around 2% of the minimum overall donation goal. The vast majority of donations is exclusively used for developer salaries.
lemmy.ml hosting is only financed by donations via Opencollective. All other donations go exclusively to developer salaries.
[source]
For donations via Open Collective, yes, a tiny fraction of donations towards Lemmy development will go towards the operation of lemmy.ml. The reasons for this include that lemmy.ml is used for testing new releases and also that it’s not worth maintaining a separate donation account for the instance. Additionally, it should be noted that the money going towards lemmy.ml hosting is just a tiny fraction of the funds that are being asked for. Hosting lemmy.ml costs around €100/month, which is only 2% of the stated minimum donation goal.
All this is very confusing to me. I had to look up what tankies are and if these giuys are tankies then they can go fuck themselves. I came here from reddit and now I am thinking I might have made a mistake. I don’t know enough aboput this federated stuff to understand it. I have no idea how to block .ml nor do I know who these people are who run it. I do know that I had a very close Ukrainian friend as a child and although he is dead now I still see the Ukrainian people are brothers and sisters. I am not sure I want to give any of my money to an intance that actively shits out fucking ork propaganda. I need some educating here.
I wouldn’t say you made a mistake. Lemmy is still a great place and instances like lemmy.world you’re on, are run by down to earth people like you and me.
It’s just that Lemmy’s core code is (primarily) developed by people who … well, have some opinions. However, that probably shouldn’t even matter. Developers’ opinions are just that - opinions. They don’t put any of their opinions into the code. And that code is then taken by people of lemmy.world to run the instance.
And up until now it wasn’t a big issue, it was more like a curiosity “Hah, this great piece of software is developed by those guys. Well I strongly disagree with them and want to have nothing with their instance and their opinions”. But now it starts to be an issue when they ask for money. People are naturally reluctant
If that should not matter, why should the CEO of Reddit matter? Why not stay there? He at least “only” wants money, no genocide or other directly inhumane stuff.
That’s what prevents me from donating money.
If they want some coding assistance … sure, I’ll help but I’m not giving them financial support.
Ok donate then
Lots of great people on Lemmy, you just have to avoid .ml and other tankie instances sometimes (and then, not everybody on .ml is a tankie).
You could choose a an instance like .cafe it seems
(notice the brigading. It goes from 240 comments to 60 when you block them)
But it really isn’t that bad on .world, and it’s certainly pro Ukraine
It’s was also massively pro Israel during the worst days of the genocide.
You think we forgot?
Who was? .ml?
Oops shit I spilled the bean. Probably gonna get banned soon again
No the worldists
your best bet is to consider another instance that directly opposes lemmy.ml’s moderation style (though i don’t know who defederates from it): slrpnk.net, lemmy.blahaj.zone, or db0 (i forget their full domain).
if you want to go a step further you could also switch to mbin or piefed. personally i find they’re less far along than lemmy which is why i’m on a lemmy instance instead of an mbin instance, but also the death of your friend is a pretty strong motivator. you want to do right by and honor your friend’s memory. x also grapple with my Ukrainain friends, both still present and forever lost, and ponder if what i do helps them or hinders them. you’ll find your way