Hey folks!

I’m writing this because funding for the Lemmy project has dropped to critical levels, which could seriously impact its future development.

Thanks to the generous support of our lemm.ee community, our server infrastructure costs are covered, and we even have a few months of runway. I’m deeply grateful to everyone who has contributed - lemm.ee wouldn’t exist without your help.

However, infrastructure alone isn’t enough. Our servers run Lemmy software, and without ongoing development, the platform cannot grow or even be maintained.

Lemmy is an open-source project with many contributors, but the vast majority of development work has been carried out by a small group of core maintainers. A few maintainers work full-time on the project, relying solely on donations and occasional grants to support themselves.

I’ve seen Lemmy development up close, and the maintainers have consistently gone above and beyond what I consider the standard for small open-source teams - they are constantly writing code, mentoring contributors, and keeping everything running. Their work is essential, and without continued support, it cannot be sustained.

If you value Lemmy, please consider supporting its maintainers directly. Every bit helps.

Please check out this post for more details about how to support the maintainers: https://lemm.ee/post/63034576

Thank you for reading, I hope you have a great weekend!

  • 1984
    233·
    17 hours ago

    The original post on lemmy.ml by the creator of Lemmy had a lot more details, so maybe just link to that one?

    https://lemmy.ml/post/29579005

    Tldr: They are down to about 1000 dollars per developer and will have to take jobs and stop Lemmy development if they dont get 2500 dollars per developer.

      • AnonomousWolf@lemm.ee
        1·
        3 hours ago

        Do not discard imperfect allies.

        I do not agree with their political view etc. but I can see that the development of Lemmy is a net positive.

        Shutting down .ml won’t save them much money, it doesn’t cost much to run a instance, developing software instead of having a tech job on the other hand…

          • AnonomousWolf@lemm.ee
            1·
            1 hour ago

            I’m sure people would also be more willing to give money of they were Vegan.

            By being overly critical of our allies we damage our movement.

            • Dragon Rider (drag)@lemmy.nzEnglish
              1·
              53 minutes ago

              Drag hopes their financial system becomes desperate enough, and enough people say it’s about lemmy.ml, that they realise they have little choice but to take lemmy.ml offline. If that happened, they would still be able to develop for Lemmy full time, and the tankie nonsense would be gone. Everyone wins.

              If they would rather get jobs and stop working on Lemmy than take lemmy.ml offline, then drag’s none too pleased with their priorities and is comfortable enough with seeing them go. Someone will fork the software and keep working on it.