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!
Made a small donation. Every bit counts, I hope.
If they weren’t tankies then I would
If the devs shit views destroy the project that’s their fault
As an Eastern European drone developer, I’m OK with donating even to people who might be called tankies …if what they do is building Lemmy. :)
(As a side note, “riseup.net” needs donations too. Anarchist-run e-mail service doesn’t come for free.)
Do you have an extra invite code for riseup.net? I’ve been wanting an account but I don’t know anyone with a code available.
Dessalines and Nutomic are criminally underpaid. Lemmy development still has a long way to go and we could get there much faster if people donated more. But in typical Lemmy fashion, people would rather sit on their high horses and throw stones from their glass houses.
I started donating to the developers 2 days after I joined Lemmy and have given over $1k since then. I find the developers to be competent, mature, and reasonable. Similarly to many other contentious topics on this platform, the conversation regarding their perceived or imagined political beliefs is completely lacking in objectivity, logic, and nuance. Y’all actually be gossiping like teenage girls about these developers even while taking advantage of the fruits of their unpaid labor. I’ve seen all the evidence of their extremism and it’s quite underwhelming when you lay it all out.
And even if I did have major qualms about the devs, I would still argue that it’s much harder to justify using any products or services from large corporations like Amazon or Reddit than it is to monetarily support a FOSS project such as Lemmy. Out of everything I’ve spent money on in my lifetime, Lemmy is easily among the most morally justifiable expenses.
I eventually had to reduce my monthly contribution once sh.itjust.works started accepting donations, because I also feel strongly about supporting my own instance. It’s unfortunate that so many lemmings seemingly understand the fact that reddit has become an evil cancer and an alternative is sorely needed, but don’t seem to understand that creating such an alternative is a project that requires a massive amount of time and effort. Donating to your instance is great, but without continued development of the underlying software, it’s a futile effort. Even if you want to die on the hill of not donating to the big bad Lemmy devs, at least donate to PieFed or something! 2 patrons?!? As an early adopter userbase, we can and should be doing a lot more to support the fediverse monetarily, imo.
It’s so sad that liberals will literally cozy up to fascists and monetarily support them however they can… But a FOSS project run by commies gets them clutching their pearls super hard
Imo, it’s people just rationalizing not wanting to give $5 away. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with deciding you don’t want to donate, that’s your choice, but be honest with yourself. If they weren’t commies, people would be finding some other excuse to not donate.
Just had a whole argument about this on that lemmyworld post that’s at the top about boycotting ml cuz someone brought up how they can’t donate if the developers are gonna use some of that money on ml server cost. They can’t see the bigger picture. Instead they wanna cry over how their $5 or whatever donation is gonna be used. Pathetic.
What’s better is that’s also the user who either watches new on ml like a hawk or has a bot that just scrapes content to pull off ml comms to put on world comms.
Godwin’s Law in full effect all the way down. At record speed I might add.
I signed up for a medium donation.
While I don’t agree with some things happening on .ml We should not discard imperfect allies. Thank you devs for the great work you’re doing.
Inherently incompatible ideologies =/= imperfect allies
ml arent allies at all and they wont see a stinking cent from me
Thank you!
Note that lemmy.ml hosting is only financed via Opencollective. All donations through other platforms go exclusively to developer salaries.
From what I’ve heard they use .ml as their test server and not donations to keep the lights on there.
Do we have any idea of how much they use to support .ml ?
If they can clear this up, it might help people.
Drag would propose that most of Dessalines’ “development” wages are probably being spent on hours moderating .ml, and that’s at least a grand per month.
Your estimate is wrong, have a look at all the code he writes: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/pulls?q=is%3Apr+author%3Adessalines+is%3Aclosed
The most recent merge request is just him updating the version numbers in all the captcha-related .tomls, lol
I’d like to join my voice with those saying it’s worth donating even if you disagree with the devs personally. My impression is they’re decent about making Lemmy a tech project not a personal political platform, and treating the Internet respectfully as a forum.
The Lemmy software supports so many communities to communicate, including the huge lemmy.world that famously hates .ml. Because the software is open, it can do that freely.
You who hate capitalism, do you donate your ad data to capitalists so they can grow sickeningly rich off your use of their software? Then you might at least let these devs live comfortably off your use of the software. And if you pay in ways you see, instead of ways you don’t, does that trouble you so much?
You don’t have to agree. And you can still use Lemmy freely! But since this software has been such a blessing to us wanting a non-reddit platform, I hope many will be happy to bless the devs back - and they’re only asking for a modest salary.
it’s worth donating even if you disagree with the devs personally. My impression is they’re decent about making Lemmy a tech project not a personal political platform, and treating the Internet respectfully
I want to underline this. And ask the reader to put themselves in the devs’ shoes for a moment.
Usually, when people have strong opinions, like extreme political views, they try to further their goal wherever they can. To abstain from that desire, and create tools which can be freely used, even by their political enemies, requires a considerable amount of decency and deserves our respect.
Either this, or they value FOSS so much (more), that they still keep Lemmy open for everyone.
In a way, they support people from the opposite side of the political spectrum, by providing them their platform freely. Isn’t that exemplary in putting the fedi spirit above political differences?
Okay, sure, but that doesn’t change the fact that these two developers, with their decisions in moderating that one instance, have dragged down the reputation of the entire platform. They’re asking for donations because they lost the donations they were already getting.
And instead of questioning why that is and addressing it, they’re asking for more.
This doesn’t inspire trust in them. I trust their ideology not to mess with the platform, what I don’t trust is their competence if they can’t stop hemorrhaging donation money by refusing to deal with the biggest wart on the platform. They have all of these people saying they would donate if they would just deal with this conflict, but they won’t. How badly do they need the money to keep developing if they’re not willing to separate?
Here’s the better question: do they even want to keep developing if they had to separate from it?
More importantly, just from a straight development perspective, this whole operation is a way too flimsy if it’s depending on these two people, alone, forever. There have been a lot of really clumsy mistakes and lack of best practices.
What happens if they finally get another developer that really knows Rust and wants to join the project but doesn’t “fit in”? How are they actually going to expand the team so this project can grow and not be so dependent on them when they have the reputation they do?
If the community were going to fork it, they would have forked it by now. I don’t think there are enough people around that can manage a fork of this platform as it exists, so we are tied to them. And I don’t think I like that. I would like to see this platform expand beyond them, but the current course doesn’t seem to indicate that will ever happen.
They’re asking for donations because they lost the donations they were already getting.
Nope, not even the tiniest bit. We know how vital lemmy is, and want to secure its long-term future by being entirely sustained by donations. We never at any point reached that goal, and given that nutomic had a new baby, this is more important now than ever.
hemorrhaging donation money
I have no idea what this means. We’re paying our daily living expenses so we can comfortably work on lemmy without having to find other work. The costs are food and rent.
this whole operation is a way too flimsy if it’s depending on these two people, alone, forever.
I’d love to be able to grow our co-op, and add more developers! Donations make that possible too, especially if they exceed 2 average dev salaries (we’re a long way off from that).
What happens if they finally get another developer that really knows Rust and wants to join the project but doesn’t “fit in”? How are they actually going to expand the team so this project can grow and not be so dependent on them when they have the reputation they do?
It’s clear you’ve never tried, because we’ve never and would never reject code contributers for petty reasons like “not fitting in”. If ppl don’t want to work with communists, that’s on them. Personally I’d never reject someone for their ideology, especially if what they’re doing is FOSS, which serves the common good.
I would like to see this platform expand beyond them,
We don’t stop people from forking lemmy and never would, that’s entirely their right.
The devs also say that they would gladly accept any development help as well, if you’re either unwilling or unable to financially contribute.
This needs to be more highlighted than just donations.
Not trying to call out politics. But I rather find a way to contribute open source than watch my money keep the lights on very specific servers.
It’s kind of clarifying to check the original post and the attitudes around there. I actually recommend it.
I’ll do my part, I just wish my country’s currency wasn’t worth 1/6 of an euro :/
Just donate 6 times the amount smh my head
omg I’m so dumb, thank you very much.
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.
Damn this community is a fucking joke. It’s actually not funny, just sad.
You all parade around the internet mounted on your high horses about FOSS this, decentralized that, libre this, reject capitalism that, etc.
But the moment you are asked to contribute your part you all start pretending to be holy saints lmfao. Most upvoted comments in these threads go like this:
“I can’t possibly donate to this project because this guy said that thing about trans”
And meanwhile every day you forgo your moral codes to buy all kinds of shit. Otherwise you’d be living in the middle of a remote island.
The people you all buy from don’t merely say something you find offensive, they do lobbying with their truckloads of money that affect how you live your life and further their own agenda.
These Lemmy devs put their work under a license that gives up the ownership and just ask for a living wage, yet by your logic they don’t deserve it?!
It’s so surprising that a forum with mostly commie ideologues has a hard time finding non-freeloaders amongst the members
We should not discard imperfect allies.
this is like you going out of your way to offer to give me a ride to the airport, and then you get mad at me for not being gracious enough about it, and then you accidentally hit a pedestrian at some point afterwards and use that against me.
No, it’s about someone building a car for you while also driving their own car. The car they built for you is unquestionably good even if you don’t like where they drive their own version. I don’t think it’s unfair for them to ask compensation for maintenance they do on YOUR version
That’s correct. People actively shilling for authoritarian regimes committing human rights atrocities, denying genocides, and aggressively silencing all dissent do not deserve it.
All they’d have to do is develop from behind the scenes and not actively contribute to one of the worst places on the platform, and I’d have no problem donating to them.
But they don’t, and so I don’t, and instead I get to listen to your whataboutism, literally the guy in the “and yet you participate in society” meme.
Lemmy dev here, for what its worth I stopped posting about politics years ago, and also dont do any moderation on lemmy.ml besides occasionally banning an obvious spam account. I simply dont have the time or interest anymore, and prefer to focus my time on development which benefits all Lemmy users.
Posting from alt account because these comments are not federating to my home instance.
Hi Nutomic. I’m new to Lemmy. I was quite impressed with what you have built, and was looking forward to helping Lemmy grow. It must have taken a lot of your effort. I was really enthusiastic about the project and a few weeks back your appeal for funding would probably have had me donating something.
Unfortunately, I’ve already had some bad experiences on your instance. I probably would have stayed away from it had I known what it stood for, but - as someone pointed out - this is the oldest instance, has some of the largets forums, so naturally that’s where many people land first.
And it really is quite an image problem for Lemmy. Someone compared you to Elon tanking (sorry for the bad pun) Tesla sales. Sure, up to some point one can say, imperfect allies, separation of code and ideology, that kind of thing. But I think you see from the comments that for a lot of people it’s too much.
For me, the combination of your views and what’s represented by .ml fundamentally undermined my trust in Lemmy as a platform. I don’t have the means to validate claims of code or development processs being impartial. It could well be that you did a lot of excellent work and have superb integrity in separating your views from your contributions. I just honestly don’t trust that is the case.
This seems pretty political. Have you apologised for it?
What would be the correct way to voice opposing views about these issues?
Genuinely asking as to my ignorant eyes this looks like a reasonable way of discussing the issues, so I must have some kind of wrongthink here and would love to be guided back to a place where people can discuss opposing views safely.
Speaking from a place of explicit respect for minorities’ lived experiences, and using appropriate terminology that is both scientifically accurate and minimises harm.
This comment fails on all three counts:
“Biological men” is not a scientific term, because biologists don’t study men and women, they study males and females. Man and woman are genders, which are studied by psychologists and sociologists.
“Biological men” is not a term that minimises harm. Calling trans women men is a form of misgendering, which has been well documented to cause psychological distress and worsen mental health.
The comment denies the statement from lived experience by trans people, that trans people are being targeted by the owning class. Members of a privileged majority telling the minority that they’re wrong about their daily experiences isn’t respectful.Drag will be happy to provide sources for any of the claims in this comment which you have doubts about. In return, drag asks that you keep an open scientific mind, seek to minimise harm, and listen to minorities about our lived experiences.
I love drag, but saying liberalism is coopting struggle of oppressed people to distract from the class war isn’t denying the reality of the oppression. Saying pink washing exists isn’t saying women aren’t oppressed.
Also that’s just one sentence. Let’s not do a whichhunt thingy
Drag doesn’t think Nutomic is smart enough to make the point you just did without saying a slur.
Thank you. No sources required, and I already try to do those things…hence my questions! I hope that my questions don’t cause harm, if they do I would like to find a way to learn without harming.
If they had said “biological male” then this would be okay? Sounds equally as hurtful to me…what is the correct term use? Trans woman?
The only thing I see them denying is that the same group of people spreading trans rights are also the ones spreading transphobia…which sounds logical to me?
I appreciate that this sounds like I’m defending them but I’m really not, I suspect from what’s said in this thread that they have a storied history of being hurtful on this topic which i think is indefensible. But I am out the loop and have very little idea who this person is.
Drag sees the effort you’re making and is grateful. You aren’t causing offense.
Yes, “biological male” would be scientifically valid language - in part - but it would not minimise harm. Trans women is much better, you’re right. Drag says it would be scientifically valid in part, because the trans women competing in the Olympics are required to no longer be entirely male. They must be on estrogen and testosterone blockers. That means regardless of what happened in the past, their body is currently performing many of the biological processes of a female, and not many of a male. In the parts of sex relevant to athletic performance, trans women are entirely non-male. Drag would say they’re females, except that trans women actually tend to be weaker than cis women due to lower testosterone. All bodies, male or female, produce testosterone. With testosterone blockers, trans women are at lower testosterone levels than a cis woman.
The only thing I see them denying is that the same group of people spreading trans rights are also the ones spreading transphobia…which sounds logical to me?
We, the trans community, spread trans rights. We pressured them into putting LGBT flags on buildings. The Olympic Committee are not the government, they’re a private organisation, and they weren’t pressured to allow trans women by governments, they were pressured by a group of scientists employed by the IOC Medical Commission (initially, in 2003. There have been developments since then).
We have been saying the owning class is attacking us for years. It should be obvious from Trump’s attacks on transgender people that billionaires hate us. And Rupert Murdoch owned media has been spreading transphobia all over the world for a lot longer than that.
If you’ll permit drag to speculate as to why: Capitalism and patriarchy are very closely linked. Trans people’s existence is a radical threat to the patriarchy at a basic level. If anyone can be any gender, if the “objective reality” of gender is destroyed, then gender oppression becomes nonsense. Rich white men want to preserve the social system that keeps them at the top, and trans people’s existence makes it obvious to everyone that they shouldn’t be.
That’s a perfectly sensible position, but the money doesn’t go just to you.
It also goes to lemmy.ml costs.
Only donations via Opencollective pay for lemmy.ml hosting. All other donation options are exclusively for developer salaries.
If that were to become the enforced position of the entire dev team going forward, I promise that I will donate, and provide receipts.
That meme literally says ‘We should improve society somewhat’ and lemmy is a perfect example of something that is ‘improved somewhat’ when you compare it to literally any other social media driven solely by profit and algorithms that reward whatever content the owners want.
But the keyboard warriors now prefer lemmy die because comments of a dev who isn’t in control of the software said… Anyways I’m donating monthly now
Lemmy won’t die. They’ll have enough money to develop the software if they just take lemmy.ml offline, and then they’d get more donation money overnight.
So right now I’m not in a financial situation that I can even possibly think about donating.
My general issue with FOSS is the guilt trip I go on when devs plead for donations – that’s MY issue, not any of the dev teams – but it plays a part in not using FOSS as much as I would like. I don’t want to sell my soul, but that’s about all I have to give right now so free ad-supported services and software are where I tend to lean to these days.
However, I am trying to put as much focus on supporting less shitty humans and buy locally whenever I can now. I didn’t realize the views of the devs of Lemmy until a few days ago and I’m a little concerned to be even using Lemmy as a whole as it shows some level of tacit support for the devs and their beliefs. If they weren’t open about it, obviously this wouldn’t be an issue but since it’s out in public it’s an issue.
I swear I have a point to all this…
Is Lemmy funded just by direct contributions from users or do instances take extra money from their donations and funnel it down to the main project?
If anyone is familiar with the various 12 Step programs, this is pretty much how those main programs get funded. The local meetings take donations that pay for the rent and any other expenses and then donate left over funds to the main service organization while keeping a reserve for emergencies.
If I were in the position to donate, I would feel much better donating to Lemmy.ee rather than the main project considering their views on certain political issues. I would not be directly donating, but if the instance donated extra funds I might be ok with that. It just feels different for some reason.
You realize it’s the owner of .ee that made the post right. Since the instance is still running, still federated with the main one, and the post is still up, maybe that says something about how acceptable those politics are
I started using Lemmy like 2 years ago, stopped for a long time, and came back a few months ago. I’m sure something has changed in that time, but I don’t know what.
It could be because Lemmy is written in Rust, which is kind of notorious for how difficult it is to be productive in it. Or maybe it’s that there aren’t enough developers, or there isn’t enough funding.
In any case, my motivation to help fund this project is not helped by the insufferable cuntery of the tankies in the .ml communities. Knowing that the core devs are also tankies makes me want to see it fail. Fuck those people.
You can read the release announcements to see what changed. Be warned its a lot.
