Lemmy - Donate
join-lemmy.org

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.

Donate

  • NutomicOPMEnglish
    107•20 days ago

    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.

    Edit: Liberapay is the preferable donation option, as it has very low fees and is also open source.

      • NutomicOPMEnglish
        26•20 days ago

        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.

      • @UltraGiGaGigantic@lemmy.mlEnglish
        5•19 days ago

        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

      • NutomicOPMEnglish
        40•20 days ago

        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.

  • DessalinesMEnglish
    69•21 days ago

    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.

    • hauiEnglish
      11•21 days ago

      It absolutely is. You also inspire people to get into foss and take up the good fight. Thanks for doing this.

      • GloomyEnglish
        7•20 days ago

        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.

        • hauiEnglish
          6•20 days ago

          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.

        • dullbananas (Joseph Silva)English
          3•19 days ago

          If I remember correctly, I got exposed to this because of the GNU + Linux interjection copypasta, which made me know about GNU

    • Lucien [he/him]English
      5•20 days ago

      I wanted to say specifically thank you for Jerboa. I only have a phone, so it makes using Lemmy painless.

  • @milicent_bystandr@lemm.eeEnglish
    60•21 days ago

    To those who don’t want to give because of the devs’ political views, I’d like to say this goes into improving the Lemmy software our communities here are based on, not making some political podium for the devs in particular.

    There’s a lot of rubbish on Lemmy… because it’s the internet. Like the Great Garbage Patch of the Pacific, it collects; but I still like the Ocean. Some people look down particularly on .ml, but personally I think this is unjustified.

    In fact, before joining Lemmy I heard some rumour of the controversy and went looking. I certainly disagree strongly with certain things I found, but my impression was of Dessalines and Nutomic treating the Internet as a forum for respectful debate and this Lemmy as a technology project not a personal political force - as many see Reddit as becoming. Well, that was my impression, so I was happy to join, and I’ve not been disappointed.

    On this Lemmy software we have many communities, some which vehemently hate each other, but we’re all supported by this foundational software. If it’s too awful to you, you could of course use a different platform, and still federate with the Lemmy communities you love! But we’re still here.

    Because, after all, in any real community there are people you don’t get on with, and part of life is about learning what it means to love each other and live together even so. And that goes for every software project too - somewhere, hiding in the dark recesses, is something quite unpalatable intrinsically linked in. If your ideology says you can’t use anything built with such problems, you’d better start building everything yourself.

    So, you don’t have to support Lemmy. Even if you use it. You don’t have to agree with my take on it. But I’d like to encourage most of you to consider supporting Dessaline and Nutomic to continue this development work, and not just the bare minimum they need - let it overflow with blessing, since we have received such blessing from them!

    …Or you can all send me angry replies for ranting too long on the Internet about something you disagree with ;-)

    • hauiEnglish
      10•21 days ago

      Absolutely agree! :) thank you very much for stating this.

  • @OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.mlEnglish
    54•22 days ago

    Lemmy default UI should seriously consider a daily donation goal, similar to old Reddit. Implement a backend API to fetch the daily amount needed and the current amount donated, and stick it on the right hand side by all the trending communities. As a stats nerd, this would seriously motivate me to donate more.

    • @Hircine@lemm.eeEnglish
      23•21 days ago

      And like the Vivaldi browser you can get a permanent badge on your name and avatar picture if you donate. im a sucker for those things. and different color depending the amount donated.

    • ShadowEnglish
      19•21 days ago

      Donation nags to users were added in a recent update. I think it shows up in a year from the last popup, so about 11 months away

  • Joe BidetEnglish
    43•21 days ago

    NB: also don’t beat yourself down if you cannot be contributing financially: there are many ways to contribute to the community by posting, commenting, reporting, moderating, and overall just being active and nice ;) your presence and participation here already means a lot!

    • Joe BidetEnglish
      17•21 days ago

      Even taking time for +1 and -1 content is useful and counts as active contribution!

    • DessalinesMEnglish
      17•21 days ago

      Yep, instance admins and mods need your support also. It takes a lot of work to keep an instance free of trolls, and its a thankless job.

  • @Rexios@lemm.eeEnglish
    36•21 days ago

    I gladly doubled my monthly contribution. Thank you so much for working on Lemmy! I had no idea you worked on it full-time. That’s insane! It is the first fediverse software I ever used, and it opened my eyes to a whole other side of the internet I didn’t know existed.

    • DessalinesMEnglish
      15•21 days ago

      Thanks! Yep its been a lot of years of work to get it to this level, but it still astonishes me that a handful of ppl can best reddit / twitter when we put our minds to it.

      • sparky@lemmy.federate.ccAEnglish
        7•21 days ago

        Quality over quantity I think. From what I’ve seen, the average Lemmy user is significantly more insightful and respectful than the average across other social media platforms. From the development side, you two are free to focus only on what genuinely improves the user experience, without having to worry about investors or some board forcing you to worsen the user experience because profits.

  • SalamanderEnglish
    35•22 days ago

    Best of luck raising funds! 👍 Pinned for extra visibility.

  • hauiEnglish
    33•21 days ago

    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.

  • @AccountMaker@slrpnk.netEnglish
    30•21 days ago

    Donated on Liberapay.

    As others have said, this is financing software development, not a political campaign. I first learned of the fediverse when Reddit removed 3rd party apps, and I felt like my eyes were opened. This is what I want the internet to be, decentralized and running on open source software, and I’m sure I’m far from being alone in this, so thanks to the devs for that.

    Also Jerboa is great!