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.
Entwickelt denn sonst jemand aktiv Lemmy oder gibt es einen plausiblen alternativen Fork? Ansonsten wird man sich mit den aktuellen Entwicklern wohl vorerst einrichten müssen, trotz gewisser weltanschaulicher Differenzen.
Das heißt natürlich nicht, dass man denen noch spenden muss, aber wenn man die Softwareentwicklung von Lemmy fördern möchte, bleibt vorerst keine andere Möglichkeit.
es gibt eine paar leute die zwischendurch pull requests erstellen aber großtteil liegt nutomic und dessalines.
zurzeit gibt es keinen fork mit nennenswerter eigenentwicklung. einige instanzen haben ein paar änderungen zu den regulären lemmy releases, aber das sind nur änderungen die entweder instanzspezifisch sind oder früher oder später in standard lemmy landen.
es gibt diverse andere threadiverse software wie mbin oder piefed, aber die sind komplett andere software. dann gibt es noch sublinks, was explizit als lemmy alternative entwickelt wurde mit api kompatibilität und migrationspfad, aber die entwicklung davon ist vor ner weile komplett eingeschlafen. mbin und piefed haben aktuell keine mobilen apps oder alternativen interfaces, womit sie lemmy in der hinsicht stark hinterherhängen, auch wenn sie teilweise andere funktionen haben die lemmy fehlen.
Ich weiß net ob Piefed und Mbin (was aus Kbin hervorgeht) ableger von Lemmy sind, aber können wie Mastodon auch direkt mit Lemmy interagieren.
so wie es die NLnet Foundation es tut.