Lemmy - Donate
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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.

Donate

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.

  • EfreetSK@lemmy.world
    0·
    2 hours ago

    I was thinking long and hard about this to form an opinion, but my answer is no.

    The final decission point was: I’m from Slovakia, it’s no secret that Russia would love to take us under their sphere of influence. You and your instance is not only supporting this, you’re actively propagating this. In fact, I’m pretty sure if Russian soldiers would be at my doorstep, threatening my family, you and your instance would be cheering. And when I would realize, that I actively supported this, that would break me.

    If you’re about to publish your work for free, I gladly use it as long as it’s run by good people like lemmy.world. This way you get no support from me. If I’d pay you, I don’t know what part of my support would end up in .ml instance which I see as a propaganda machine against countries like mine. And even if you say that none of my money would end up there, I kind of don’t want to support you as a human being. I won’t pay your salary so you have energy to do what you do on .ml instance.

    If Lemmy as a project dies, so be it. Foss world can always spark successful forks (see OpenElec vs LibreElec) and alternatives like PieFed already exist

  • orangeboats@lemmy.world
    0·
    5 hours ago

    ITT: a mighty showcase of the divide-and-conquer strategy by psyops.

    Instead of realizing that our goal as an alternative community to Reddit is first and foremost to… well duh, to build a community and keep it thriving, people here are infighting, preferring to subdivide themselves into tankies and non-tankies.

    If Lemmy eventually fails and no other project with a similar feature-set can show up in time, we end up killing the existing momentum.

    If that happens, all of you shall remember this very moment, and bravo to the psyops people (be it from the government or corporate) because you won yet again.

    Donated. Though because I am living in a third world country it’s just a measly ~25 dollars.

  • ProfHillbilly@lemmy.world
    0·
    8 hours ago

    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.

  • Imhotep@lemmy.world
    0·
    9 hours ago

    I just logged into Liberapay, and then I saw their profile pictures. Remembered I can’t donate to tankies (inb4: I didn’t say communists) any more I could maga supporters. or IDF apologists

    lemmy.ml:

    Hey but they’re not that bad! Nutomic responded in this thread:

    I certainly dont praise or support civilians being displaced from their homes.

    Isn’t it wonderfully vague? You know who expressed the same sadness about displaced people? guess

    You can remove all ambiguity by saying who is the unequivocal aggressor responsible for the gruesome death of thousands of young men and civilians in Ukraine.

    How’s the denazification going, guys?

  • socsa@piefed.socialEnglish
    0·
    9 hours ago

    Fuck the lemmy.ml devs. I’m not going to donate to a group of people who have clearly targeted me over and over again across multiple accounts with petty bans for gently questioning their authoritarian orthodoxy.

    Donate to forks like piefed or mbin. Let .ml reap what it sows.

  • Birch@sh.itjust.works
    0·
    13 hours ago

    Toss a coin to your lemmy maintainer, oh valley of shitposts

    Just donated a tenner, keep rocking. Also, fuck spez.

  • Avid Amoeba@lemmy.ca
    0·
    14 hours ago

    The purity testing and holier-than-thou attacks going on in these fundraising threads are truly counterproductive. We’re not strong enough as an ecosystem and community yet to be able to afford this luxury. If this is coming from the left, I think you should consider the larger goal here.

  • endeavor@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    0·
    14 hours ago

    No. Not until the people who want to genocide everyone who does not speak russian are gone from the project.

      • endeavor@sopuli.xyzEnglish
        0·
        13 hours ago

        Then why was I told me and all my people need to be killed by russians by a ml user this morning? If you dont agree with those people why are they only on your federations? If I didnt like bunch of tankies and putinists spreading their wishes of world genocide around I’d remove them from my platform. The fact they are not removed and people who are talking back at them are speaks volumes of .ml and other tankie federations and people who run them.

        • Nutomic@lemmy.ml
          0·
          10 hours ago

          Then why was I told me and all my people need to be killed by russians by a ml user this morning?

          Please link this comment so I can handle it. I am certainly against any and all kinds of genocide.

  • viking@infosec.pub
    0·
    16 hours ago

    I was a paid patreon member which was supposed to give you access to the dev chat on discord, but despite asking a few times and paying for almost half a year, it just never happened. So I couldn’t take them seriously.

    Since I blocked .ml I can’t leave a reply on the original message, and I’m not going to unblock them just because.

    • Nutomic@lemmy.ml
      0·
      10 hours ago

      We dont use discord at all, the chats are on Matrix and accessible for free. I see the membership descriptions on Patreon are wrong, will get those fixed shortly.

  • nthavoc@lemmy.todayEnglish
    0·
    17 hours ago

    I’m not donating a single bit of whatever currency to .ml. Pick one or the other: dev costs or your own personal soap box cost.

      • nthavoc@lemmy.todayEnglish
        0·
        7 hours ago

        I still stand by what I said. Not a single fraction of any currency either directly or indirectly to that instance.

        • givesomefucks@lemmy.worldEnglish
          0·
          6 hours ago

          It seems like they’re twisting words…

          The “developer salaries” appear to go to that account and another lemmy.ml admin.

          So they’re all over this thread saying lemmy.ml only gets donations from that one method, and failing to mention who the “developers” are.

          So they’re telling people to support thru those methods, because they personally still get a cut as a Lemmy ml developer.

          So no matter how you give, lemme.ml admins get some of that money.

          Which is personally why I’m not. Maybe if that person who is personally receiving a cut of the funds wasn’t constantly lying about it.

          But what does anyone expect from lemmy.ml?

    • viking@infosec.pub
      0·
      16 hours ago

      Meh, you can block the instance and still see the value in the project. I’d rather have both than neither.

      • nthavoc@lemmy.todayEnglish
        0·
        7 hours ago

        I did. I can’t force the instance I am on to de-federate and I can’t ban all users. I also don’t agree with this campaign of those users to start the Reddit refugees and exiles there. You’re making all of Lemmy appear like they support that specific view of politics.

      • endeavor@sopuli.xyzEnglish
        0·
        14 hours ago

        That’s how I use them but i am not giving a dime to those who want to kill me and constantly spew russian peopaganda. They can beg putin for funds.

      • nthavoc@lemmy.todayEnglish
        0·
        7 hours ago

        Tell you what, if you make lemmy.ml like a jail for those users where they can sit there all day long and let the other users themselves disconnect or not even see their posts, I will start donating. Almost like a 4chan for lemmy.

          • nthavoc@lemmy.todayEnglish
            0·
            6 hours ago

            I have been there. .ML, Hexbear, an Lemmygrad are the top three problem children. While there’s “1000’s of instances” those three are always listed as the top three to join which is a problem . This not an new thing and it’s kind of annoying that people call them “imperfect allies”.“Imperfect allies” can tank your entire platform because people don’t want to be associated, not with just things they disagree with, but with users that are like zealots. Either remain neutral in the platform you develop and let it police itself with the tools you give it, or don’t ask for money for personal soapboxes.

  • MintyFresh@lemmy.world
    0·
    17 hours ago

    Just threw in a couple bucks! Loving Lemmy, it lacks the stench of capitalism that reddit fell victim to. Thank you to everyone who makes this place work!

  • trolololol@lemmy.world
    0·
    20 hours ago

    I’ve made my donation today for the first time.

    I find it helpful that we have been keeping people full time, funded by donations. I would hope this model grows, expanding into for example specific features getting their own bucket of money, as we can voice our support for things that can get lost in a backlog.

    I’m not sure I’ve seen how to contribute the old way, by donating time and performing tasks. Not my case, but how would someone get started on that?