- cross-posted to:
- announcements@lemmy.ml
- youshouldknow@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- announcements@lemmy.ml
- youshouldknow@lemmy.world
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.
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
lemmy.ml:
Hey but they’re not that bad! Nutomic responded in this thread:
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?
Apparently (from what .world admins have said in this thread) Nutonic is 1 of 2 developers who are trying to make Lemmy a full time job and take a cut of all donations to facilitate that…
Which makes all their comments insisting lemmy.ml only gets money thru one method look a hell of a lot like intentionally manipulating a user base for financial profit.
Like, the money not going to lemmy.ml but a cut going to two of their main admins personally is a pretty big piece of information they haven’t mentioned once.
I don’t think anyone saying they don’t want to give to lemmy.ml would still be ok with it going to their two main admins’ personal accounts instead.
You realize that it’s not some smoke show that they’re “two of the main admins” right? That they are the two primary developers and creators of the entire platform and .ml was the initial flagship instance (which they literally directed people away from during the Reddit surge)?
Most people don’t know near as much about .ml as you think they do…
It’s a silly place that bans everyone who disagrees with them and 99% of the fediverse will never notice.
The day the rest of the other instances drop .ml and all their devs to work on their own fork has to happen before fediverse can take off.
The entire instance is literally an albatross around the fediverse’s neck.
That’s not even getting I to the lack of transparency with “salaries”.
Are they making 10k and want 20k? Or 10k and want 120k?
Who are they accountable to? Who makes sure they work?
Who will decide if their work is high enough quality?
Who will ensure they listen to users instead of pissing them all off so they leave?
A corporation has shareholders, a private business has a CEO, political groups has chairs…
This is giving all the money/power to two individuals, accountable to no one with zero transparency how funds are used…
And I just realized why the Marxist/Lenists are ok with this…
It’s literally the same grift y’all fell for in the first place.
More rubber duck debugging than anything you said, but you did contribute to me figuring out why you all support this
Why not… read the post?
I… I do not know where to begin on there ranting that they are not allowed to make a livable wage because they dont have a boss looking over their sholder, dispite having a trackrecord for developing lemmy
Yup. That’s why I only replied to the one part where they show they haven’t even read the post itself.
I just feel like someone needs to point out the insanity of the latter half, of the post, that dispite a proven track record, because they are not out to make a profit with shareholders or a board of directors they cannot be trusted, I would suspect this is the next goal post they move to if they get satified with paying for labor is ok
Look they only made that statment because every comment threat was that they would only donate if there was a way that it went to the developers and not lemmy.ml, and they got feedback that making a distiction would get people to donate. They are quite clear that this is so they can get a wage they need to survive, and for the record that is mentioned, at the top of the post, that they need to a little more than double donations in order to pay themselves an amount to keep working on this.
Most people would consider paying a lemmy.ml admin a “salary” the same as paying money to lemmy.ml
Especially when they can use that salary to keep Lemmy.ml running.
This is for them, as the only 2 devs who are full time, to be able to survive contenuing to make lemmy. If you are so agreved they run an instance to use as their public beta, then by all means, but dont act like they are trying to pull the wool over anyones eyes here. First the complaint was hosting, now its the fact that they are asking to be able to survive doing the work, what maintancing code would be. Just say you dont want to donate stop moving the goal posts or acting like something is afoot
Shouldn’t lemmy.ml support them?
Isn’t that the entire point of communism?
Why do they keep saying “delevopers salary” like it’s a team of different people and not two lemmy.ml admins?
Everything I’ve seen in this thread is pretty clearly stating they don’t want to donate if any money goes to .ml
Maybe you’re confused because you’re in multiple different threads trying to insult users of different instances into paying a salary for your admins?
Well because they are a team, who make the ENTIRE PROGRAM that all the lemmies work on. They are not “just” working for .ml, heck .ml only exists as the last step in the dev process.
Second the “point” of communism is a classless stateless society, wherein the means of production are owned in common by all workers. If you would like to learn more about communism I can get you resource, if you would instead like to use your ignorance as a poorly formed insult, then by all means be my guest, just know that it makes you look ignorant, and like you are unwilling to learn anything.
I am say developers salary, because THAT IS WHAT THEY ARE, they are quite literaly the developers of the whole LEMMY PROJECT, they are the only ones working full time and they do BY FAR the bulk of the of the work.
I am saying the what is defined as going to .ml is slowly being moved, from direct suport cost, well they fixed that issue, to now it being because they are the admin, that is not to say that the second is new nor that I am saying that everyone is switching, I am merely commenting how when that problem was fixed a large number of people moved to the second. Look if you dont want to donate, or are unable to donate fine. Where I am confused, or frustrated is the meaningless distictions being made or the flag in the sand.
Yes I am reading all the threads, why because i have found it the most interesting way to learn about each instance, and I am nosey. However each instance had it posted by their own admin team, and by “insulting difrent users” I mean, sure I have probably done that, but that has not been the primary intent, nor is my intent to get them to pay for the administration of .ml I am saying that .ml plays a part in the dev cycle, so that there is one last review before it goes out, and I find the hand wringing annoying, because they are as the devs of the project asking to be able to live off their labor, the labor that allows your beloved (and in my opinion most toxic instance) .world to function. I am asking for a more proper fraiming of the issue.
This is what you replied to:
Then you accused me of “moving the goalposts” for saying this:
Can you explain what goalposts were moved without another manifesto no one will read?
I mean interesting, that you cut out other parts of the reply, and then defend an already typed out responce for each point a manifesto. I feel that says more about you than it does about me.
but the TL;DR is that you are pushing the 2 rolls, one as the Developers for the project/platorm and the admin of the testing instance as the exact same roll. They have the costs they need for .ml down and have mentioned that it is from a specific donation sorce as people where asking for, and now they need to be able to live off of making lemmy the project. Now that it is said that your not giving money to .ml you are paying the project developers, in lets be honest most of the cost is labor cost so their salary, as developers you say “Well paying the .ml admin salary is the same as paying for the upkeep of .ml” once agian they mentioned they have now a new bucket for .ml, and this goes so they can contenue to be the developers for the project. That is moving the goal posts, you changed it from I dont want to pay for .ml to i dont want to pay for anything that could even be related to .ml
Watch out one of the devs here will gaslight you to beg for more donations.
How much do you get paid to run your smear campaign?
!meanwhileongrad@sh.itjust.works
It’s all documented right there, “smear campaign” means to constantly accuse someone of something knowing they actually didn’t do it for the purpose of ruining their reputation or other consequence like getting fired
If the subject in question is actually doing the things they’re being accused of and can provide evidence then that’s wholly justified
When will you donate? Or was it all bullshit and you want to move the goalposts?
When they’re off the admin list
And a new, unbiased and fair, team is in place. I’m quite clear about that
Until then, I have recurring donations for PieFed, .world and .cafe
So moving the goal post then. I guessed as much. Freeloading piece of shit. Who the f are you to tell other instances who should be admins are you completely deranged?