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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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.
Not while the devs run a pro-genocide echo chamber. Tankie punks fuck off.
God, no. If Lemmy today is gonna be all spam of the shitheads begging for money then I guess it’s closer to death than I thought
I’ll take a grassroots donation campaign over ads any day.
There are other services that can provide what Lemmy does without supporting their admins where your money would be better off going. Or just use adblockers like an adult, lol
That’s actually been my plan, jump ship when .ml’s toxicity finally sank Lemmy, cuz I’m too lazy to do anything until shit actually happens
Then jump
Does it look like it’s sunk? I get that you .ml people aren’t the brightest bulbs in the box but you can usually do better than that
^ the non-toxic instance users, everyone
You’re concern trolling and wrecking in multiple donations threads created to support the platform and the devs who created it. You can just leave and join one of the alternatives instead.
Careful, someone might see that and say that your observation does not mater because your from .ml
I use Lemmy despite these alternatives existing.
I contribute nothing in terms of development or money to these Lemmy alternatives or to Lemmy.
If ads have to come, I’ll just use adblockers “like an adult” to the detriment of other users.
How is running ads supposed to fuel development costs? Who knows lol. Oh, how’s it especially supposed to do anything when everyone uses an adblocker? Who cares, fuck you.
Then I’m going to go out of my way to bitch and moan about people contributing to Lemmy’s development so there’s a corner of the Internet that isn’t suffocated with corporate garbage.
$100 says you’re only here because you got booted from Reddit for shitty behavior, not unfair treatment, the rampant enshittification, or a belief that FOSS or the Fediverse are better. Just donated another $10 to compensate for your “the ‘F’ in FOSS stands for freeloading” ass.
$100 says you’re only here because you got booted from Reddit for shitty behavior, not unfair treatment, the rampant enshittification, or a belief that FOSS or the Fediverse are better
Cool, send me my money cuz you can trace this account right back to the API incident on Reddit. Nice try, dipshit
Just donated another $10 to compensate for your “the ‘F’ in FOSS stands for freeloading” ass.
Cool, waste your money, stay mad you pathetic bootlicker
Can I, though? Can I really trace it?
I’ve told the story before: told an admin on Reddit calling anyone who played Hogwarts: Legacy transphobic an idiot
That was months before the API disaster, I had been using an alt for quite a while
That’s also not this account, which is the one I was talking about. What’s up with the people in my replies doing absolutely 0 fucking thinking today?
Surely you can see how ridiculous you sound.
“i don’t want to support the open source, non-ad driven platform that won’t harvest and sell my data. So I’m going to go to platforms that do that and try to dodge their attempts instead.”
Let’s ignore the fact that you are probably not good enough to get away with what you think you are (an ad blocker is not going to give you real privacy), you really don’t see the benefit to having a platform that just… Doesn’t do that shit?
If that’s not the case, then leave. But don’t sit here and try to spike attempts at making this sustainable.
Putting a lot of words in my mouth there, bud
My problem is with this specific platforms owners, and I never advocated for the alternative of corp sites
Calm down and think for 3 seconds next time
You know telling people to calm down is inherently antagonistic and doesn’t cool off the conversation so how about you stop and think for 3 seconds next time before bashing your face into your keyboard and gracing us with whatever inane bullshit dumps out of your head.
You know telling people to calm down is inherently antagonistic
Says the dickwad calling me ridiculous and rambling about whatever came to their mind
Someone’s mad I called out their shitty take, whine harder
I’m fine. You seem rather angry. You should calm down.
Calm down and think for 3 seconds next time
If you just leave this bullshit our of your replies, nobody would think you’re a raging, idiot narcissist. Write and then delete it, if that makes you feel better, but nobody is ever going to engage with you in good faith while you act like this.
If you just leave this bullshit our of your replies, nobody would think you’re a raging, idiot narcissist
If you think I’m that because of the reply to the guy who wanted about me based on nothing that’s a you problem, homie
but nobody is ever going to engage with you in good faith while you act like this.
They already weren’t, as you already saw, guy just made a whole AU fanfic about me. Not surprising, they do shit like that regularly according to the user note I have
Personal anecdote: after going vegan a few years ago, a lot of criticisms of veganism I’ve seen have taught me that these kinds of holier-than-thou attacks of less-than-perfect action often come from people who don’t want to take any action themselves.
The cognitive dissonance arises that the people taking action feel good about what they’re doing, and they suddenly feel deep down like they could be doing something wrong by not taking action. To resolve it, in lieu of taking action, they justify why they shouldn’t, usually “well that’s not literally perfect, so actually why should I should do anything?” Meanwhile, the people taking the less-than-perfect action are even more painfully aware of its flaws but are putting in the work to do better than they would’ve been otherwise.
This is definitely a good comparison!
FWIW: I hate seeing all the mockery vegan people get. I think a lot of people project this idea that you all think you’re superior, when ultimately you’re just making a decision that inconveniences you more than anybody else.
.ml is needed for development. I’d support its existence even if I’d rather defederate.
.ml is needed for development
An instance is, it does not have to be theirs or run the way they do
Sounds like a really good reason to not make that incredibly important test instance so shitty and toxic then, but that’s the choice they made.
I know your not from .world, but if we are talking about toxic instances, in my experence the worst ones have been beehaw and world.
Holy shit, from your comment history it does not surprise me at all that you think that.
I mean, that’s a fundamental part of many open source projects. I recently got an email from a few asking for the same because of economic troubles, and many people are feeling the squeeze right now and cut their donations first.
It doesn’t necessarily mean that a project is about to fail. But it’s often the case that with better support, they could aspire to do more.
they either have insane funding and no releases, or low to no funding and constant releases lol
Spamming the entire page of every instance is not a fundamental part of FOSS projects, and is just another example of the dogshit Lemmy devs being dogshit
You do realise that it was each instance admin that posted outside of .ml They only posted once. I feel like this is obvious, but posting once and having others cross post is not spamming
Look frankly I don’t love this, but how the hell else do you expect this to get done? We can’t just expect people to work for free all the time in a predominantly capitalist world. They have to eat.
Are you developing the platform? Do you have another idea for How to pay their bills?
but how the hell else do you expect this to get done?
I dont, specifically because of who the money goes to
We can’t just expect people to work for free all the time in a predominantly capitalist world. They have to eat.
They can also just not continue development if they don’t get the money. That’s a fine option, too
Are you developing the platform? Do you have another idea for How to pay their bills?
No, and many, but it’s also not my concern at all given the shitstains the developers are
If they stop development this all dies.
Oh no! Not like there are alternatives we could swap to immediately!
Lemmy is the vast majority of Reddit-like community. Mbin is fledgling, Kbin is dead. A few others puttering around.
It wouldn’t necessarily be the end of the world, but that’s a pretty fucking hard reset if Lemmy collapses. There are a lot of of us here who really like being here.
they expect other ppl to tap in, they think they are stopping other ppl from helping lol
I donated! Great job, and I really appreciate your work.
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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.
While I understand the moral objections people have to supporting the developers, I do think its fair to highlight how they do not treat us.
We are not a product here to be exploited and advertised to. They also respect your choice to block ml and not to interact with them at all for the rest. I am sure I would be absolutely abhorred by the depth of depravity of your average silicon valley CEO’s hot takes, but they dont share it for this exact reason. Instead they just design their entire product and business around it, which is the enshittification we all know and hate.
People you dont agree with having a place of their own on the fediverse is a logical consequence of the idea behind it, and while uncomfortable, is a greater good in the end.
But to maintain that it means putting your money where your mouth. If not to them, to your own instance.
And how exactly are bunch of genocide supporters who claim to be leftists (russia is an authoritarian capitalist state) any better than some American oligarchs?
People you dont agree with having a place of their own on the fediverse is a logical consequence of the idea behind it, and while uncomfortable, is a greater good in the end.
We’re also not required to fund those people. I don’t care if they exist, but I will not be party to their bullshit
You should delete the app then, if it’s so important to you.
You’re not required to do anything, let alone directly funding ml. That’s not what I am arguing for. I am arguing for you to support Lemmy despite the chance some of it might go to ml.
It goes the other way too, the developers probably disagree with a large part of the beliefs of people using lemmy, yet they also put in their time to create and foster it, which we never had to pay for either. They did it for the reasons they mention (free spaces, not owned by corporations that suck their users dry), which is separate from their other political positions.
I am arguing for you to support Lemmy despite the chance some of it might go to ml.
They have been up-front about this (surprisingly) - there is no “might.” Donating to these devs is a donation to lemmy.ml, without exception.
Yeah, it’s literally all over this thread, not exactly a secret. It’s kind of a weird nitpick of my comment, considering it’s just a way of phrasing things. If I give an alcoholic some money, I will say “they might use that to buy booze”. Because I am sure they buy booze, but they might use my money to buy some food instead. Not every single dollar you give the developers will go to ml.
I saw somewhere an estimate of 2%. Another estimate was much less.
Certainly more than 2% of Lemmy use goes to people who hate .ml!
Maybe the haters can see it that way: donating to support Lemmy to support Lemmy.world to continue hating on lemmy.ml!
Not true, lemmy.ml is only funded by donations via Opencollective. All other donation platforms go exclusively to developer salaries.
Very well said. In addition, the fact that they hold the beliefs they do makes them extremely unlikely to flip and get on the enshittification wagon.
Very well said. Everything good in life, will have some aspects that you (the global ‘you’) won’t like.
Lemmy is a huge improvement over corporate social media. Maybe it has some ideologies you don’t like here, but it beats an algorithm that secretly manipulates you.
If I use a FOSS product, then I try to pay for it, even if it’s not perfect. For example, Firefox gets a lot of well deserved hate but without it I’m not sure there would be a realistic FOSS browser.
My experience anywhere on Lemmy that .ml touches has been notably worse than anything I have experienced on reddit.
I am sure I would be absolutely abhorred by the depth of depravity of your average silicon valley CEO’s hot takes
That’s a really good point.
Also, the Lemmy devs might have authoritarian views but work off of donations while the silicon valley CEOs are some hyper-capitalists with power. The lesser evil seems clear to me.
In a former life I worked in the financial sector. The only reason statesia hasn’t genocided itself to bones already is because all the ceos have been incompetent stumbling over each others’ plans for genocide and (fortunately for us, depending on how depressed you are) kept fucking it up for so long.
Became a free member on patreon when i first joined lemmy. Completely forgot to actually up the tier. Recurring donations are now on, thanks for the reminder!
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Done. Lemmy is too good not to get properly funded.
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I’m skint sorry
Currently donating $5 a month to lemmy.world. I’ll continue for the foreseeable future.
