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.

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.

I'd like to join my voice with those saying it's worth donating even if you disagree with the devs personally. My impression is they're decent about making Lemmy a tech project not a personal political platform, and treating the Internet respectfully as a forum.

The Lemmy software supports so many communities to communicate, including the huge lemmy.world that famously hates .ml. Because the software is open, it can do that freely.

You who hate capitalism, do you donate your ad data to capitalists so they can grow sickeningly rich off your use of their software? Then you might at least let these devs live comfortably off your use of the software. And if you pay in ways you see, instead of ways you don't, does that trouble you so much?

You don't have to agree. And you can still use Lemmy freely! But since this software has been such a blessing to us wanting a non-reddit platform, I hope many will be happy to bless the devs back - and they're only asking for a modest salary.

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).

The original post on lemmy.ml by the creator of Lemmy had a lot more details, so maybe just link to that one?

https://lemmy.ml/post/29579005

Tldr: They are down to about 1000 dollars per developer and will have to take jobs and stop Lemmy development if they dont get 2500 dollars per developer.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

If they weren't tankies then I would

If the devs shit views destroy the project that's their fault

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.