Hey folks!
I’m writing this because funding for the Lemmy project has dropped to critical levels, which could seriously impact its future development.
Thanks to the generous support of our lemm.ee community, our server infrastructure costs are covered, and we even have a few months of runway. I’m deeply grateful to everyone who has contributed - lemm.ee wouldn’t exist without your help.
However, infrastructure alone isn’t enough. Our servers run Lemmy software, and without ongoing development, the platform cannot grow or even be maintained.
Lemmy is an open-source project with many contributors, but the vast majority of development work has been carried out by a small group of core maintainers. A few maintainers work full-time on the project, relying solely on donations and occasional grants to support themselves.
I’ve seen Lemmy development up close, and the maintainers have consistently gone above and beyond what I consider the standard for small open-source teams - they are constantly writing code, mentoring contributors, and keeping everything running. Their work is essential, and without continued support, it cannot be sustained.
If you value Lemmy, please consider supporting its maintainers directly. Every bit helps.
Please check out this post for more details about how to support the maintainers: https://lemm.ee/post/63034576
Thank you for reading, I hope you have a great weekend!
It’s so sad that liberals will literally cozy up to fascists and monetarily support them however they can… But a FOSS project run by commies gets them clutching their pearls super hard
Imo, it’s people just rationalizing not wanting to give $5 away. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with deciding you don’t want to donate, that’s your choice, but be honest with yourself. If they weren’t commies, people would be finding some other excuse to not donate.
Godwin’s Law in full effect all the way down. At record speed I might add.
People are avoiding supporting lemmy monetarily due to the actions of the developers. We do not reward bad behaviors here. If lemmy development ends most of us will just move to kbin or piefed. This is a non-issue.
Just like with Elon Musk, if someone wants people to support them monetarily, they shouldn’t work hard to make themselves objectionable to wide swaths of the population they are trying to extract money from.
You can argue that, despite their opinions, the lemmy devs provide something of worth.
What actions of the developers are you talking about? I’m not trying to start a fight, I’m honestly out of the loop or whatever.
They’re communists 😱
Tankies, specifically
Authoritarian commies who have very different-from-reality opinions and word definitions
Oh, and transphobia
tankie is just the new scary sounding word for communist derived from when the soviet union helped defeat a CIA backed color-revolution in Hungary
I imagine the biggest point are the censorship, disinformation and tankie allegations. These are all documented in this post. Another point worth bringing up is that they are the admins of lemmy.ml, where most of the allegations happen. Lemmy.ml also has something of a tankie problem and one of the devs has said that the donations will also cover the cost of running the instance. So by donating to the devs you’re also donating to an instance that possibly has no problem with censorship, disinformation and harboring tankies.
I would be willing to turn a blind eye if I could trust the devs to step away from lemmy.ml and focus solely on the development of Lemmy. But I don’t trust the devs enough to actually do that so I personally won’t be supporting Lemmy development until someone else becomes the maintainer of Lemmy.
EDIT: just to cover off the inevitable “what will happen if we stop supporting Lemmy. I don’t want to go back to Reddit” fear. If Lemmy doesn’t work out and it gets abandoned there’s always Mbin. Anyone here from the Reddit exodus knows that it’s annoying to migrate but Mbin can federate with Lemmy which means going from Lemmy to Mbin is going to be less painful than form Reddit to Lemmy.
lemmy.ml is part of Lemmy development as it is used to test new versions before release, take performance measurements and have first-hand experience with the mod tools. If I stepped away from lemmy.ml it would make Lemmy worse and cause more problems for other instance admins. In any case the costs for lemmy.ml hosting are already covered at a much lower donation level, anything you contribute goes directly to developer salaries.
They should try just using it for development instead of forcing out tankie propaganda, then.
lemmy.ml is part of Lemmy development as it is used to test new versions before release, take performance measurements and have first-hand experience with the mod tools.
Then you really shouldn’t be surprised that people don’t want to donate when part of that support goes toward an instance that openly and aggressively supports authoritarian regimes, human rights violations, and genocide denial, and brutally censors any dissenting viewpoints.
If I stepped away from lemmy.ml it would make Lemmy worse and cause more problems for other instance admins.
The other option, of course, would be to run lemmy.ml in a way that doesn’t actively piss off the majority of Lemmy users, but that doesn’t seem to be a path you’re willing to consider.
Honestly I’m genuinely torn about the situation. I’ve found such a great place here (outside of the tankie triad, of course), that as much as I disagree with your politics I’d probably donate anyway because of how great Lemmy is as a platform, if only you developed behind the scenes and weren’t personally responsible for one of the worst places on said platform. As it is, as long as both a) lemmy.ml continues to be run the way it is and b) you continue to have an active part in that instance’s abhorrent behavior, I can’t in good conscience give you any financial support.
Would you donate to Lemmy if lemmy.ml hosting was funded separately?
