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!

  • Kevnyon@lemm.ee
    0·
    1 day ago

    At the end of the day, even hardcore users are not willing to fork it over. Why? Because of all the content that is accessible without having to pay. People have gotten used to not paying for stuff like this over the years, what was going to make them start now? Development will always cost time and it will past a certain point always cost money. So many things cost money that if a site on its baby legs like Lemmy starts asking for more, you think its gonna get it? I doubt it and that sucks, but that just proves that you need that mainstream financial backing in order to host all the users and the content and it costs money, lots of it. And with hardcore users who are here before the mainstream, well, they aren’t the casuals who sink money into it, just plain and simple.