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 (β¬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 2000β¬ per month. This leaves only 1000β¬ 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 5000β¬ per month, resulting in a modest salary of 2500β¬ 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
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 β¬100/month, which is only 2% of the stated minimum donation goal.
I would never donate so long as that donation supports lemmy.ml
Based on the general community sentiment I've seen and your reports of barely breaking even here, you can either break from the tankies or watch lemmy die without enough funds.
This is, unfortunately, the necessary view to take. Lemmy the software is a net positive, but nobody should be giving money to support their extremism and love of censorship, particularly when it happens on whatβs arguably the βofficialβ instance.
Numotic and Dessalines actively cultivate very toxic content:
If you disagree with these positions, too bad! Because your posts will be deleted, or youβll get banned, or your instance defederated, from ml.
Are you aware that the top and bottom part of the post are from completetly different people? The top part is from Lemmy.world's admin, while the bottom part is from one of the Lemmy developers (and Lemmy.ml's admin).
...are you under the impression that they're unrelated?
As stated in the post, donating to lemmy.world infra costs always means that a portion of your donation goes to lemmy devs. Said devs have very explicitly stated that part of those donations finance lemmy.ml
it's around 2.5% of our monthly expenses that go to the lemmy devs. 2% of the stated minimum donation goal would be the hosting costs for lemmy.ml. with the assumption that the lemmy donation goals is met, that would mean around 0.05% of the donations to lemmy.world/fedihosting foundation are used for lemmy.ml hosting costs.
this was already explained in a few other places in the comments here, but in the end, even if it wasn't directly going to instance operating costs, if you pay people a salary and they then take it out of their own pockets there is no real difference, as the money would still end up in the same place.
edit: it has since been clarified that only donations via Lemmy's open collective account are used for lemmy.ml hosting costs. our donations towards Lemmy development are not done through open collective and therefore 0% of lemmy.world/fedihosting foundation donations are used for lemmy.ml hosting costs.
whether this is something that makes a difference in the end is something you have to decide on your own, but this is still the addressing the frequently mentioned topic of having donations explicitly for development rather than also supporting lemmy.ml operations.
Yes, correct, that's why I'm not donating. I don't want to be paying lemmy.ml.
A small amount of support is still explicit support.
as this has since been clarified by @nutomic@lemmy.ml, i have updated my comment above and can confirm that it is in fact 0% of lemmy.world/fedihosting foundation donations that go towards the lemmy.ml instance rather than 0.05%.
Sorry but gotta highlight the maths here
0.05%
You would have to give L.w $10,000 for L.ml to get $5
They probably got more value from your posts in this thread in an abstract sense
A small amount of support is still explicit support. I don't support lemmy.ml, and I'm not going to donate any of my money to them.
If lemmy.world wants my money, they need to alter where their donations go π€·ββοΈ I'm not going to rage on the topic or anything, but they're not getting my money
Okay, but maybe think about what happens to all this if it doesn't get funded. No one is forcing you to pay, it's entirely your choice after all, just like it is to try and put people off.
Wanna go back to Reddit?
Do you understand the concept of FOSS? If they pull the plug, other enthusiastic devs fork the project and continue it.
Yes, I also understand that FOSS projects of this size generally survive on donations and/or corporate sponsorships?
No corporation is going to sponsor lemmy, so donations it is
I'm not really sure of the point you're trying to make here.
Also this particular person I was replying to was saying the only reason they won't even contribute to the server costs of LW, is because a penny might go to .ml
"Okay, but maybe think about what happens to all this if it doesn't get funded."
Now read my comment again.
Again, a reminder of what this reply was in response to
Servers don't run on good vibes
Just explaining what you're asking. I fully agree with the comment that if you don't want to contribute to tankies than don't contribute in the way that current funding is set up.
As I said to the other person, that's your choice. I'm just highlighting the consequences of each option.
If you fund the servers you're using, they continue to exist. If you donate literally thousands to LW, a dollar might go to ml.
If no one funds the servers they're using, the servers go away, but at least ml didn't get a penny.
I personally think the net benefit of all this massively outweighs a negligible amount of money going to something I don't really support.
To finish with a laboured example: shopping at my local shop means a load of diesel got burnt to bring the products for the shelves, which I'm not really supportive of. However, I'm not gonna stop buying stuff from them because they're not using 100% electric vehiclesβI want the local businesses near me to continue even if they're not perfect, the good outweighs the bad.
Or MBin, or KBin, or piefed? Reddit isn't anywhere close to the only game in town anymore, and I'm pretty convinced it's actually 80% bots at this point.
...which instance do you use again?
The one I was originally linked to π€·ββοΈ I have no loyalty to .world
If it doesn't get funded, then hopefully someone with a less distasteful ideology forks it and starts fresh. Lemmy isn't worth giving my money to people who want to enslave me.
>trying to guilt-trip others to pay
>No one is forcing you to pay, it's entirely your choice after all
Ahh yes, the bogus charity approach.
I'm not trying to guilt trip, just pointing out that this thing we're all using needs funding, and if the person I was replying to's main reason for not donating is simply because they're worried about funding .ml, that they would have to give hundreds to even fund it a single dollar.
I'm not a particular fan of the instance, but Lemmy continuing to exist is more important than that IMO.
Pointing out the reality of the situation isn't guilt tripping or forcing, sorry if you feel it is.
lemmy.ml hosting is only financed by donations via Opencollective. All other donations go exclusively to developer salaries.