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.
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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
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.
In the same week - according to Internet super minds - I’ve been paid by Sandfall Interactive to promote Expedition 33 AND by the government to hinder Lemmy’s implacable expansion.
It was a good week.
That’s the kicker – you are not even being paid when you are contributing to their cause.
I hereby proclaim you’re a russian agent paid to promote tankie ideas, which is why you are wrong in whatever you say.
Shit, why haven’t I used this before. No need to debate, very handy.
Just saying that I am not the one claiming everyone (that I dislike) is an [insert any country/organization here] agent ;) But people can be misguided into supporting something that is ultimately detrimental to them – see also Trump supporters.
Not while the devs run a pro-genocide echo chamber. Tankie punks fuck off.
Exactly. These people at lemmy.world supported sending tanks to gaza, and now they reveal their disguisting faces by saying things like “Palestinians deserved it” .
Tankie scumz
The genocide of Gazan civilians is indeed horrible, just like the genocide of Ukrainian civilians. Both make me feel sick. However, only one of these observations is allowed to be uttered on tankie instances. And no, I don’t see the same amount of an intense echo chamber across the entire .world instance.
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
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
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.
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
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(I can’t find a source/misremembered? my bad)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?
Watch out one of the devs here will gaslight you to beg for more donations.
Toss a coin to your lemmy maintainer, oh valley of shitposts
Just donated a tenner, keep rocking. Also, fuck spez.
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.
I have personal friends in Ukraine who were displaced from their home by the invaders. I cannot morally justify giving any kind of benefit to the people who would praise or support their actions.
Lemmy is just a thing, it can cease to exist for all I care.
I have a friend in Kiev who barely go out and just hope not to be sent to his death.
Kyiv*
Yes, forced conscription is horrible.
But, it’s counter-productive to donate money to Ukraine to aid in their defense against the Russian Invasion of their country, and then support an instance that is actively spreading Russian propaganda against Ukraine. Seems like you have to make a choice there, and I choose to side with the people being wronged.
But is not donating going to change anything?
sorry to put this down on your comment
those aunts and uncles and brothers and daughters that you’re all so mad at and won’t ever talk to again. that all won’t matter soon.
those people next door who fly a flag that rustles your jimmies. or the bumper stickers about who to encourage. that all won’t matter soon.
those co-workers you can’t stand who drive you crazy and won’t let you eat lunch alone. or the managers that bug you to shit. that all won’t matter soon.
what WILL matter is that you know each other. it’ll gauge how you should barter with them.
none of this shit is going to matter in a little while. mark my words.
No. Not until the people who want to genocide everyone who does not speak russian are gone from the project.
Maybe you should go back to reddit? Stormfront is probably more to your liking?
The “everyone I disagree with is a Nazi” argument? Seriously? You can’t do better than that?
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.
Why do you use such a terrible place like Lemmy then?
I dont use the same space since the evil federations are blocked, making it not the same space.
See ? What great work of the devs to give you that opportunity. How about supporting it so you can keep having it?
I’ll support them when the project is taken over by devs who I can morally justify supporting and who don’t harbour people justifying genocide and mass murder. Not only that the devs praise mass murder and genocide as long as its done by team red.
Would you be supporting lemmy with a donation if the main federation was exclusively ran by literal fucking nazis and nazi sympathyizers and they themselves held some beliefs? Why you do it for palette swap of nazis who want to kill humans all the same, for the same reason of not being porn a certain ethnicity or nationality?
If lemmy dies, tough shit, theres a trillion other platforms just waiting for users.
If lemmy was built by Nazi I wouldn’t use it at all, idiot
So fuck off then ? That is what i would have done if i was a reactionary bootlicker
Ah shit. I’m currently a starving musician. I’ll scrape you off some of the next gig.
Before you do learn of their political stances and take a look at the federations they manage. Then think hard about what the company people keep says about them
Maybe you can quit your smear campain. You are obviously not acting in good faith. You are a shill trying to destibilize a platform that compete with big players and state actors.
Go acquint yourself with the dear leaders beliefs.
They are against basic human rights and vocal about it, like lgbtq. Nuphonic thinks human rights like lgbtq is western propaganda. A stance russia wants you to hold.
But you have no problem whatsoever in using the services these horrible people provide you? Why are you here?
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.
Lemmy.ml monthly server costs: like 30$/mo
Cost to develop a Reddit: like 30M/yr
Price Lemmy devs are doing it for: 3000$/mo
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.
You’re not federated with Lemmygrad.ml or Hexbear.net, are you? If you think Lemmy.ml is bad for their communist views, you aint seen nothing yet
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.
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!
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?
if people want to contribute code, they can check out the various repositories in the LemmyNet GitHub org to see which issues are looking for someone to pick them up.
the main repositories, by language, are:
- Rust
- lemmy - backend of the application
- activitypub-federation-rust - federation library
- lemmy-ui-leptos - work in progress rewrite of lemmy-ui in Rust
- TypeScript/Inferno
- lemmy-ui - the default lemmy web interface
- Kotlin
- jerboa - the official Android app
additionally, there is a range of open source alternative web interfaces and apps that wouldn’t mind contributions. some of them are listed here: https://github.com/dbeley/awesome-lemmy?tab=readme-ov-file#alternative-front-ends
- Rust
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?
Good point, it’s a bit hidden away: https://join-lemmy.org/docs/contributors/01-overview.html
- (Formally) Reporting issues
- Translating
- Programming and Design
- Donating
No ads and no algorithm isn’t free.
Folks, open your wallets and throw a few bucks Lemmy’s way. I’m a monthly donor myself, and I consider it money well-spent compared to the shit show that is every other social media platform.
Done. Lemmy is too good not to get properly funded.
