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

I signed up for a medium donation.

While I don't agree with some things happening on .ml We should not discard imperfect allies. Thank you devs for the great work you're doing.

I've been around for long enough, time for me to donate.

Sure the two top admins have some shitty opinions, but they still are the main people who have put this software out. The two have been tirelessly working on it for years and years, and have made code that helps everyone, whether you share their opinions or not.

Dessalines and Nutomic are criminally underpaid. Lemmy development still has a long way to go and we could get there much faster if people donated more. But in typical Lemmy fashion, people would rather sit on their high horses and throw stones from their glass houses.

I started donating to the developers 2 days after I joined Lemmy and have given over $1k since then. I find the developers to be competent, mature, and reasonable. Similarly to many other contentious topics on this platform, the conversation regarding their perceived or imagined political beliefs is completely lacking in objectivity, logic, and nuance. Y'all actually be gossiping like teenagers about these developers even while taking advantage of the fruits of their unpaid labor. I've seen the evidence of their extremism and it's quite underwhelming when you lay it all out.

And even if I did have major qualms about the devs, I would still argue that it's much harder to justify using any products or services from large corporations like Amazon or Reddit than it is to monetarily support a FOSS project such as Lemmy. Out of everything I've spent money on in my lifetime, Lemmy is easily among the most morally justifiable expenses.

I eventually had to reduce my monthly contribution once sh.itjust.works started accepting donations, because I also feel strongly about supporting my own instance. It's unfortunate that so many lemmings seemingly understand the fact that reddit has become an evil cancer and an alternative is sorely needed, but don't seem to understand that creating such an alternative is a project that requires a massive amount of time and effort. Donating to your instance is great, but without continued development of the underlying software, it's a futile effort. Even if you want to die on the hill of not donating to the big bad Lemmy devs, at least donate to PieFed or something! 2 patrons?!? As an early adopter userbase, we can and should be doing a lot more to support the fediverse monetarily, imo.

The devs also say that they would gladly accept any development help as well, if you're either unwilling or unable to financially contribute.

I came here because reddit is turning into a corporate shithole. Users getting banned because of Luigi apologia and so on and so on. Was really relieved that we did in fact have a great, open source alternative to reddit.

My problem is the lead developers of this platform. They do not see the issues with their political bias being woven into their platform (and their transphobia), it will face the exact same shit thats happening to reddit today.

I can't pay money to people who deny the pain of trans people. I just can't. And if the lead developers of Lemmy run out of funds, well then I guess they'll have to just take a good look in the mirror if they don't see the reason why Lemmy failed. For now I'm gonna use lemmy if I can, but you can't expect people from reddit to come here and support you guys when their is really hateful shit being spewed by those people (tankies).

Made a small donation. Every bit counts, I hope.

thanks for the post sir, happy to throw a few money units in

I'll do my part, I just wish my country's currency wasn't worth 1/6 of an euro :/

Support sent.

So right now I'm not in a financial situation that I can even possibly think about donating.

My general issue with FOSS is the guilt trip I go on when devs plead for donations -- that's MY issue, not any of the dev teams -- but it plays a part in not using FOSS as much as I would like. I don't want to sell my soul, but that's about all I have to give right now so free ad-supported services and software are where I tend to lean to these days.

However, I am trying to put as much focus on supporting less shitty humans and buy locally whenever I can now. I didn't realize the views of the devs of Lemmy until a few days ago and I'm a little concerned to be even using Lemmy as a whole as it shows some level of tacit support for the devs and their beliefs. If they weren't open about it, obviously this wouldn't be an issue but since it's out in public it's an issue.

I swear I have a point to all this....

Is Lemmy funded just by direct contributions from users or do instances take extra money from their donations and funnel it down to the main project?

If anyone is familiar with the various 12 Step programs, this is pretty much how those main programs get funded. The local meetings take donations that pay for the rent and any other expenses and then donate left over funds to the main service organization while keeping a reserve for emergencies.

If I were in the position to donate, I would feel much better donating to Lemmy.ee rather than the main project considering their views on certain political issues. I would not be directly donating, but if the instance donated extra funds I might be ok with that. It just feels different for some reason.

I started using Lemmy like 2 years ago, stopped for a long time, and came back a few months ago. I'm sure something has changed in that time, but I don't know what.

It could be because Lemmy is written in Rust, which is kind of notorious for how difficult it is to be productive in it. Or maybe it's that there aren't enough developers, or there isn't enough funding.

In any case, my motivation to help fund this project is not helped by the insufferable cuntery of the tankies in the .ml communities. Knowing that the core devs are also tankies makes me want to see it fail. Fuck those people.

Just doubled my monthly contribution! Thanks for the reminder.

I'm a (small) monthly supporter already! I wish lemmy had a way to give people a little checkbox in their profile for supporters.

It's kind of clarifying to check the original post and the attitudes around there. I actually recommend it.

Godwin's Law in full effect all the way down. At record speed I might add.

I had made the suggestion to them that they could start offering some kind of managed hosting services for people running instances. I have a couple of instances running with a hosting provider. If I could have them running with the support of the devs then that would be awesome.

Are you telling me DeCeNtrAlIZaTiOn and FOsS are not enough to magically keep a project going?

Surprisedpikachu.png

At the end of the day, even hardcore users are not willing to fork it over. Why? Because of all the content that is accessible without having to pay. People have gotten used to not paying for stuff like this over the years, what was going to make them start now? Development will always cost time and it will past a certain point always cost money. So many things cost money that if a site on its baby legs like Lemmy starts asking for more, you think its gonna get it? I doubt it and that sucks, but that just proves that you need that mainstream financial backing in order to host all the users and the content and it costs money, lots of it. And with hardcore users who are here before the mainstream, well, they aren't the casuals who sink money into it, just plain and simple.