dessalines

Here is our regular update that explains what we have been working on for the past two weeks. This should allow average users to keep up with development, without reading Github comments or knowing how to program.

In case you missed the announcement, this week we launched a redesign of join-lemmy.org together with our first annual funding drive. Please consider donating to support Lemmy development.

We are also readying another release candidate 0.19.0-rc.4. As usual it is available for testing on voyager.lemmy.ml and by installing the Docker image on your server. There are no breaking changes this time as we are preparing for the final release. It has been one month since we announced the major breaking changes for 0.19. In that sense we would like to know from developers of Lemmy clients and frontends if their projects are ready for 0.19, as we are planning to release it within the next weeks. There is no specific release date, but we will first update lemmy.ml to a release candidate, and if it works well publish the new release shortly after.

@nutomic is implementing a proxy for remote images, so that clients don't have to connect directly to remote servers and avoid leaking personal information. He also added support for Arabic and Cyrillic usernames and community names. Additionally he made various smaller changes and code rewrites, such as ordering reports and registration applications by oldest first.

@dessalines has implemented numerous minor bug fixes and enhancements. This includes disabling voting for bot accounts, a change to the hot rank to avoid content getting pushed off the feed after mass downvoting, and more. Also added an Platform filter for the join-lemmy.org/apps page, and fixed a memory issue.

@phiresky is extending the /api/v3/site/federated_instances endpoint to include error count and time of last successful send for each linked instance. This will allow determining the exact state of federation between all instances.

@SleeplessOne1917 made two minor improvements to 2FA code input and to the search page.

@hackerncoder relaxed the check for valid displaynames to allow more unicode symbols.

Support development

@dessalines and @nutomic are working full-time on Lemmy to integrate community contributions, fix bugs, optimize performance and much more. This work is funded exclusively through donations.

If you like using Lemmy, and want to make sure that we will always be available to work full time building it, consider donating to support its development. Recurring donations are ideal because they allow for long-term planning. But also one-time donations of any amount help us.

• Liberapay (preferred option)
• Open Collective
• Patreon
• Cryptocurrency (scroll to bottom of page)

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/7291022

Some months have passed on since the Reddit blackout this June. It led to an explosive growth in Lemmy users, and lots of urgent work in scaling, bug fixes, user onboarding and more. Since then things have calmed down significantly, giving us breathing room and time to get more long-term work done.

As of Nov. 2023, Lemmy is at ~36k active daily users 🥳 (those who have posted or commented within the last month). While user counts are not an explicit goal of ours, this is still a tremendous achievement, and one which we can all be proud to be a part of. It shows that people truly do want alternatives to US tech companies, and will use them if they exist.

Join-Lemmy Redesign

Most recently we've been working on a redesign of join-lemmy.org to provide a better onboarding experience and cater towards new users. This includes:

• A helpful new instance picker to reduce choice overload.
• The instances page is now filterable, based a set of topics and languages, as well as sortable based on activity. The default sort is Random, to encourage people to join smaller servers.
• The apps page now has sections for Android, iOS, and web apps, as well as libraries. Feel free to do a pull request to add any apps that are missing.
• The donate page now shows the total amount of monthly donations across all platforms. More details below.
• The technology used is Typescript with tailwind and daisyUI CSS frameworks.

For server admins: If your instance isn't listed already, you must explicitly add your server topics and languages by doing a pull request to this file.

As you may have noticed, texts on the website are unchanged, and images on the main page are still generic placeholders. We are hoping for your contributions to improve them. For the texts, edit this file. Translations are managed via weblate. Images are located in this folder. If you are good with AI tools, consider replacing main_federation.webp and similar with more colorful images. More main_screen_x.webp images with custom themes or alternative frontends would be nice too. In general feel free to open issues or pull requests for improvements to the site.

Funding Drive

Before the Reddit migration, our income was almost exclusively made up of generous donations from the NLnet foundation. This funding was based on getting paid for implementing new features, specified in advance.

We've known that this funding could not last indefinitely, and that after several years of funding, NLnet's resources are better spent getting other projects up and running. Additionally, much of our time is spent on other equally important work: reviewing changes from community contributors, fixing bugs, doing support, and various organizational tasks.

That is why we are launching our first annual funding drive. The goal is to increase monthly, recurring donations from currently €4.000 to at least €12.000. With this amount @dessalines and @nutomic can each receive a yearly salary of €50.000 which is in line with median developer salaries. It will also allow one additional developer to work fulltime on Lemmy and speed up development.

Recurring donations from Lemmy users are the most sustainable solution for the future. It also means that we need to worry less about funding, and can focus more on improving Lemmy. And instead of being accountable to an external organization, we work directly for Lemmy's users. While one-time donations are also welcome, they are too unpredictable for long-term planning.

You can find available donation options on the donate page. This page was also updated during the redesign to display current donations and funding goals. If each active Lemmy user donated ~€0.33 per month it would be enough for 3 full-time developers. So please consider donating if you use Lemmy every day. Our preferred donation platform is Liberapay because it doesn't have any payment fees or delays, and is itself open source.

Besides Lemmy's developers, please consider donating to those who develop open-source apps or software for the Lemmy ecosystem, as well as server admins and moderation teams who are the backbone of the Lemmyverse. We would be happy to add donation links for the above to join-lemmy.org as well!

If you have any suggestions in regards to the topics mentioned in this post, please let us know. We also want to use this opportunity to thank the countless contributors who are working on Lemmy now.

Some months have passed on since the Reddit blackout this June. It led to an explosive growth in Lemmy users, and lots of urgent work in scaling, bug fixes, user onboarding and more. Since then things have calmed down significantly, giving us breathing room and time to get more long-term work done.

As of Nov. 2023, Lemmy is at ~36k active daily users 🥳 (those who have posted or commented within the last month). While user counts are not an explicit goal of ours, this is still a tremendous achievement, and one which we can all be proud to be a part of. It shows that people truly do want alternatives to US tech companies, and will use them if they exist.

Join-Lemmy Redesign

Most recently we've been working on a redesign of join-lemmy.org to provide a better onboarding experience and cater towards new users. This includes:

• A helpful new instance picker to reduce choice overload.
• The instances page is now filterable, based a set of topics and languages, as well as sortable based on activity. The default sort is Random, to encourage people to join smaller servers.
• The apps page now has sections for Android, iOS, and web apps, as well as libraries. Feel free to do a pull request to add any apps that are missing.
• The donate page now shows the total amount of monthly donations across all platforms. More details below.
• The technology used is Typescript with tailwind and daisyUI CSS frameworks.

For server admins: If your instance isn't listed already, you must explicitly add your server topics and languages by doing a pull request to this file.

As you may have noticed, texts on the website are unchanged, and images on the main page are still generic placeholders. We are hoping for your contributions to improve them. For the texts, edit this file. Translations are managed via weblate. Images are located in this folder. If you are good with AI tools, consider replacing main_federation.webp and similar with more colorful images. More main_screen_x.webp images with custom themes or alternative frontends would be nice too. In general feel free to open issues or pull requests for improvements to the site.

Funding Drive

Before the Reddit migration, our income was almost exclusively made up of generous donations from the NLnet foundation. This funding was based on getting paid for implementing new features, specified in advance.

We've known that this funding could not last indefinitely, and that after several years of funding, NLnet's resources are better spent getting other projects up and running. Additionally, much of our time is spent on other equally important work: reviewing changes from community contributors, fixing bugs, doing support, and various organizational tasks.

That is why we are launching our first annual funding drive. The goal is to increase monthly, recurring donations from currently €4.000 to at least €12.000. With this amount @dessalines and @nutomic can each receive a yearly salary of €50.000 which is in line with median developer salaries. It will also allow one additional developer to work fulltime on Lemmy and speed up development.

Recurring donations from Lemmy users are the most sustainable solution for the future. It also means that we need to worry less about funding, and can focus more on improving Lemmy. And instead of being accountable to an external organization, we work directly for Lemmy's users. While one-time donations are also welcome, they are too unpredictable for long-term planning.

You can find available donation options on the donate page. This page was also updated during the redesign to display current donations and funding goals. If each active Lemmy user donated ~€0.33 per month it would be enough for 3 full-time developers. So please consider donating if you use Lemmy every day. Our preferred donation platform is Liberapay because it doesn't have any payment fees or delays, and is itself open source.

Besides Lemmy's developers, please consider donating to those who develop open-source apps or software for the Lemmy ecosystem, as well as server admins and moderation teams who are the backbone of the Lemmyverse. We would be happy to add donation links for the above to join-lemmy.org as well!

If you have any suggestions in regards to the topics mentioned in this post, please let us know. We also want to use this opportunity to thank the countless contributors who are working on Lemmy now.