- cross-posted to:
- lemmyworld@lemmy.world
- lemmy@lemmy.ml
- asklemmy@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- lemmyworld@lemmy.world
- lemmy@lemmy.ml
- asklemmy@lemmy.ml
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.
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Update: For those of you who want to support Lemmy development without financing the hosting of lemmy.ml, know that the hosting is paid exclusively through OpenCollective. You can see the payment details at this link. This means donations through all other platforms (Liberapay, Ko-fi, Patreon, Crypto) are exclusively for Lemmy development, and not a single cent goes to lemmy.ml hosting.
This should probably be documented on the open collective page.
Right, updated.
But I want to support lemmy.ml
Then you can donate via Opencollective. But honestly it doesnt matter, because lemmy.ml hosting is already covered, and is very cheap compared to developer salaries.
I appreciate the transparency! :)
This update is what made me setup a recurring donation.
Thanks :)
Who are the developers and what instance are they affiliated with?
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As far as I understand it, the development team of Lemmy is bigger than that, but nutomic and dessalines as the founders and paid to develop lemmy full-time of course are the most important ones.
@sleeplessone@lemmy.ml is a maintainer of lemmy I think and
@dullbananas@lemmy.ca is a maintainer of lemmy backend?
Not sure about the status of flamingos and phiresky who also contribute to the codebase and were part of the recent AMA
Flamingos is a much loved admin of feddit.uk ☺️
Nutomic and Dessalines, and lemmy.ml
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I advise you to consider the weekly pledge over the one time donation. It would be a better course of action as it might help them plan ahead.
Also, I’m a caveman, so I would advise against following my advice
The real devs are locked into a server room with appropriate supplies of food and caffeine. So dont worry about them.
Yearly or weekly doesnt make a big difference so whatever works for you. Depending on the platform small donations may have higher fees though.
I have a dollar or two to spare
If I didn’t respond to anyone below, thank you. It means a lot, and makes the years of work I’ve spent on lemmy feel worthwhile and important.
It absolutely is. You also inspire people to get into foss and take up the good fight. Thanks for doing this.
Underrated point. I started out with all the usual bloatware and, at best, a rudamentary feeling why that might be bad. I ditched Windows by now and are activly trying to get rid of Google and their likes, replacing more and more apps with foss alternatives. Trying to pull my family in too. That simply not would have happend without beeing exposed to this by Lemmy.
If I remember correctly, I got exposed to this because of the GNU + Linux interjection copypasta, which made me know about GNU
Thats me a year ago. Now i run pretty much 100% foss, have converted some family, run a foss it business and help activists stay safe on electronic devices. I’m not joking. Lemmy was a big part in that.
I wanted to say specifically thank you for Jerboa. I only have a phone, so it makes using Lemmy painless.
❤️
From what I can see, what’s stopping a lot of people donating is the fact that donations cover .ml as well, I personally think this is a non-issue, because .ml doesn’t cost much to run (from what I can see).
Would it be possible to split donations for lemmy development, and donations for lemmy.ml?
Yes it would be possible. The question is if people would really be more willing to donate in that case, or if they would look for a different excuse instead.
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Actually lemmy.ml hosting is only funded via Opencollective, so if you donate through any other platform the money goes entirely to developer salaries.
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I already updated the description on Opencollective to mention this. Other platforms only cover developer salaries like the descriptions say.
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That seems unnecessary because most people dont care. There is a vocal minority which keeps complaining but they dont need to be appeased any more.
Took me a moment to understand the point. But I agree, from a transparency view alone. The users of .ml should be funding .ml, not the people trying to keep lemmy as a project alive. Generally, large insrances should be funding the project, not the project those instances imo.
There’s also the fact that Nutomic is a known transphobe, and donating to lemmy’s development means supporting said transphobe. If we could get non-problematic devs, that would be ideal. But until then, the only real options are “use Reddit” or “support a tankie transphobe.” And neither is a great choice.
what does a cia-backed color revolution in hungary 70 years ago have to do with lemmy?
no, no no they mean the modern definition of tankie: Someone left of Kamala Harris (everyone knows she’s as left as it gets before you horseshoe theory around and become red fash)
tAnKiE
You are on a “tankie” website made for and by tankies
I’m specifically not on a tankie website; I’m on an anarchist website that is federated with a tankie website. The largest reason most instances still federate with .ml is because it’s the only instance that the devs will use. So if you want to actively follow Lemmy’s development, (and despite the devs’ problematic attitudes, I think everyone here wants Lemmy to succeed), you need to federate with .ml.
You are sitting on lemmy complaining about lemmy devs being tankies so you won’t donate to them but you want them to succeed but you hate them but you love them
You can want a project to succeed, even if you don’t like the person in charge of the project.
Its not that hard. If hitler (or name your villain) made and kept improving a cancer drug and nobody else is taking up the mantle, you’d probably care more about keeping people alive (or in this case off of heroinbook and reddit) than the person.
Lets be honest, 2500 per dev is a joke. They could be making three times that if they just accepted one of the offers that are thrown at them BECAUSE of lemmy and other projects showing their skills.
Barely keeping them alive is not helping their views or anything they care about besides lemmy being improved. For transparency reasons I too would prefer to have separate fundraiser for ml directed at ml users but thats a different topic.
Another important point is that reddit stans would want you to hate tankies grrr and not donate so lemmy goes away as one of the few alternatives. A alone would fund these two if I could just because fuck reddit.
I love what they’ve made but their views are absolutely abhorrent. Having said that I am willing to donate as the project overall is a beautiful piece of software & I’ve donated a handful of times already but I will seethe that a single penny goes to keeping .ml online.
piefed.social fedia.io joinmbin.org join.piefed.social
Lemmy.ml is the dev test instance, for one, and for two, the donations are to pay the devs wages, which allows them to dev Lemmy full time. You’re essentially saying you want to control what the devs of Lemmy can pay for with their salaries at that point.
What’s wrong with dev.lemmy.ml enterprise.lemmy.ml and ds9.lemmy.ml?
That aside, I think that there would be enough people who would donate to .ml, I read somewhere that it was €30/month, which doesn’t seem like much.
We always put out calls before (major) releases, but very few ppl actually help test. This means a lot of bugs only get spotted when more eyes see them in production.
All of these issues are solved in the corporate world by paying quality assurance / testing teams, but open source projects don’t have those resources.
We always put out calls before (major) releases, but very few ppl actually help test
Where are those posted? I think I always miss them, happy to help with testing before major releases
In the matrix dev chats, but we could also post them elsewhere.
The fact that there aren’t a lot of users to give feedback. Lemmy.ml is like a public beta channel, in a way.
true, but if it gets more people to donate, I think it would help.
Just donated! Best of lucks.
Thanks!
Thx!
Best of luck raising funds! 👍 Pinned for extra visibility.
Featured, best of luck to the donation drive. The lemmy developers do good work and deserve good pay
Has nutomic ever apologized for his transphobia? That behavior should never be rewarded
I just noticed that featuring will only pin to “All” and not “Local”. It is helpful to cross-post to a local community to pin it more visibly.
Good point, thanks
Been donating monthly for a while now!
Doubled my monthly donation hopefully more people will do the same.
I’ve been hosting my own instance for two years now without hiccups.
maybe give incentives like upvote award feature for the respective instance that has been donated to. that way people would be more willing to get something out of it in a more tangible way
That might affect whether or not the income is taxable.
What do you mean by “upvote award feature”?
awards that cosmetically work like upvotes in a sense. reddit has them, but they link that to nothing or ad free features.
Bound to donations I dont see why this would be a bad idea. Gives a strong sense of community, especially if theres for example special ones bound to each instance
I see, or simpler yet a special badge which is shown next to donor’s username. Definitely worth considering. Thanks for the suggestion!
may I use this moment to ask you if this is intended (see spoiler formatted section in the post)
EDIT maybe its the photon frontend, I’ll crosspost there too
awards that cosmetically work like upvotes in a sense.
Upvotes are mechanical, maybe there’s a better comparison. I left reddit before they added awards, but I assume the idea is that someone donates and is then able to add a decorative award to their favorite posts they see, maybe limited to giving one award per day?
It’s fun, but on the other hand when I occasionally visit reddit, some posts look like a slot machine with a hundred awards, and even if they don’t mechanically push a post higher, it feels a bit pay-to-win for me, because someone with lots of money can put attention-grabbing awards on posts they like. So I’m not sure where I sit on on those kinds of features, because I do believe that it’s helpful to reward people who have donated, so long as they don’t get an advantage in the community for it.
well it would be tied to financing this platform in my suggestion, so I dont see the issue if the upvotes are the only metric for post ranking and on the other hand awards being only cosmetic
u can always ublock them away if you personally have spite against the look of some icon. but yea there surely is a wrong way to implement such features… as u mentioned a prime contentder for a service gone shady/shill
I’m putting in a dollar a week for the second year now and i plan on keeping it up. If only 1500 people did what I do, we’re completely fine.
If you host an instance, please give a dollar a week. If you spend more than 10 hrs on lemmy per week, please give a dollar. Its not that hard. Think what stuff you pay more for and spend less time o, have less fun on and learn less from.
I also think that big instances should be funneling a portion of their donations to the devs. I send more than I get, which is my choice.
Democracy requires participation.
Donated what I could on a hard month (something something insurance company something something half of my salary), but with heart. If the fundraiser persist, I’ll be glad to donate more next month!
I’ve set up a recurring payment - thanks for the great work!
Thx!
Donated , kudos for XMR option
.world and .ee must be benefitting financially from your work; are they helping at all?
What do you mean? They are also free and if anything running lemmy cost them!?
They’ve developed mobile apps; got Google to prioritize search results for them; and their user bases are motivated & organized enough to share & curate lists of other lemmy users.
They’ve gone well beyond what other instances do and that usually suggests that someone’s getting paid to make it all happen.
Do you have citations for any of this?
They work with Google etc?
these come from observations at the time of the reddit blackout diaspora and from watching lemmings accidentally share this information with everyone on lemmy; i’m not willing to be sealioned to look it up for you.
So you have no evidence of this. Ok
My question was certainly not in bad faith since I have never heard anyone say anything like this
You said that already
They’ve gone well beyond what other instances do and that usually suggests that someone’s getting paid to make it all happen.
I’m sure dessalines and nutomic are also being financed by CCP and FSB to develop a platform for spreading propaganda to the West.
\s perhaps
They do, but also donations are still entirely optional. We’re a soup kitchen providing a free meal; if people don’t want to eat the soup, or eat it but don’t want to (or aren’t able) to support the kitchen, that’s not a problem.
i guess i just don’t like the fact that i’ve paid more than five-star-restaurant for my soup when there are clearly other groups that can afford more and there’s leverage that can be used to everyone’s mutual benefit.
Exactly, this is how I retired at 26
- setup .world
- pay all costs myself
- ???
- profit
Do you really think the people that setup instances make a lot of money?
Afaik they also donate a bit, but they also dont have a lot of money to spare after server costs.
Are they in the same situation as you?
There are donors from both of their communities
