Lemmy - Donate
join-lemmy.org

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.

Donate

  • Nutomic@lemmy.mlOPMEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    Update: For those of you who want to support Lemmy development without financing the hosting of lemmy.ml, know that the hosting is paid exclusively through OpenCollective. You can see the payment details at this link. This means donations through all other platforms (Liberapay, Ko-fi, Patreon, Crypto) are exclusively for Lemmy development, and not a single cent goes to lemmy.ml hosting.

      • Nutomic@lemmy.mlOPMEnglish
        0·
        2 months ago

        Then you can donate via Opencollective. But honestly it doesnt matter, because lemmy.ml hosting is already covered, and is very cheap compared to developer salaries.

      • UltraGiGaGigantic@lemmy.mlEnglish
        0·
        2 months ago

        I advise you to consider the weekly pledge over the one time donation. It would be a better course of action as it might help them plan ahead.

        Also, I’m a caveman, so I would advise against following my advice

      • Nutomic@lemmy.mlOPMEnglish
        0·
        2 months ago

        The real devs are locked into a server room with appropriate supplies of food and caffeine. So dont worry about them.

        Yearly or weekly doesnt make a big difference so whatever works for you. Depending on the platform small donations may have higher fees though.

    • vxx@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      2 months ago

      Who are the developers and what instance are they affiliated with?

  • milicent_bystandr@lemm.eeEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    To those who don’t want to give because of the devs’ political views, I’d like to say this goes into improving the Lemmy software our communities here are based on, not making some political podium for the devs in particular.

    There’s a lot of rubbish on Lemmy… because it’s the internet. Like the Great Garbage Patch of the Pacific, it collects; but I still like the Ocean. Some people look down particularly on .ml, but personally I think this is unjustified.

    In fact, before joining Lemmy I heard some rumour of the controversy and went looking. I certainly disagree strongly with certain things I found, but my impression was of Dessalines and Nutomic treating the Internet as a forum for respectful debate and this Lemmy as a technology project not a personal political force - as many see Reddit as becoming. Well, that was my impression, so I was happy to join, and I’ve not been disappointed.

    On this Lemmy software we have many communities, some which vehemently hate each other, but we’re all supported by this foundational software. If it’s too awful to you, you could of course use a different platform, and still federate with the Lemmy communities you love! But we’re still here.

    Because, after all, in any real community there are people you don’t get on with, and part of life is about learning what it means to love each other and live together even so. And that goes for every software project too - somewhere, hiding in the dark recesses, is something quite unpalatable intrinsically linked in. If your ideology says you can’t use anything built with such problems, you’d better start building everything yourself.

    So, you don’t have to support Lemmy. Even if you use it. You don’t have to agree with my take on it. But I’d like to encourage most of you to consider supporting Dessaline and Nutomic to continue this development work, and not just the bare minimum they need - let it overflow with blessing, since we have received such blessing from them!

    …Or you can all send me angry replies for ranting too long on the Internet about something you disagree with ;-)

  • irelephant [he/him]🍭@lemm.eeEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    From what I can see, what’s stopping a lot of people donating is the fact that donations cover .ml as well, I personally think this is a non-issue, because .ml doesn’t cost much to run (from what I can see).

    Would it be possible to split donations for lemmy development, and donations for lemmy.ml?

    • Nutomic@lemmy.mlOPMEnglish
      0·
      2 months ago

      Yes it would be possible. The question is if people would really be more willing to donate in that case, or if they would look for a different excuse instead.

            • Nutomic@lemmy.mlOPMEnglish
              0·
              2 months ago

              I already updated the description on Opencollective to mention this. Other platforms only cover developer salaries like the descriptions say.

                • Nutomic@lemmy.mlOPMEnglish
                  0·
                  2 months ago

                  That seems unnecessary because most people dont care. There is a vocal minority which keeps complaining but they dont need to be appeased any more.

        • haui@lemmy.giftedmc.comEnglish
          0·
          2 months ago

          Took me a moment to understand the point. But I agree, from a transparency view alone. The users of .ml should be funding .ml, not the people trying to keep lemmy as a project alive. Generally, large insrances should be funding the project, not the project those instances imo.

    • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.mlEnglish
      0·
      2 months ago

      Lemmy.ml is the dev test instance, for one, and for two, the donations are to pay the devs wages, which allows them to dev Lemmy full time. You’re essentially saying you want to control what the devs of Lemmy can pay for with their salaries at that point.

    • mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      0·
      2 months ago

      There’s also the fact that Nutomic is a known transphobe, and donating to lemmy’s development means supporting said transphobe. If we could get non-problematic devs, that would be ideal. But until then, the only real options are “use Reddit” or “support a tankie transphobe.” And neither is a great choice.

        • Z_Poster365 [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
          0·
          2 months ago

          no, no no they mean the modern definition of tankie: Someone left of Kamala Harris (everyone knows she’s as left as it gets before you horseshoe theory around and become red fash)

        • mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          0·
          2 months ago

          I’m specifically not on a tankie website; I’m on an anarchist website that is federated with a tankie website. The largest reason most instances still federate with .ml is because it’s the only instance that the devs will use. So if you want to actively follow Lemmy’s development, (and despite the devs’ problematic attitudes, I think everyone here wants Lemmy to succeed), you need to federate with .ml.

          • Z_Poster365 [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
            0·
            2 months ago

            You are sitting on lemmy complaining about lemmy devs being tankies so you won’t donate to them but you want them to succeed but you hate them but you love them

            • Hansae@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
              0·
              2 months ago

              I love what they’ve made but their views are absolutely abhorrent. Having said that I am willing to donate as the project overall is a beautiful piece of software & I’ve donated a handful of times already but I will seethe that a single penny goes to keeping .ml online.

              • haui@lemmy.giftedmc.comEnglish
                0·
                2 months ago

                Its not that hard. If hitler (or name your villain) made and kept improving a cancer drug and nobody else is taking up the mantle, you’d probably care more about keeping people alive (or in this case off of heroinbook and reddit) than the person.

                Lets be honest, 2500 per dev is a joke. They could be making three times that if they just accepted one of the offers that are thrown at them BECAUSE of lemmy and other projects showing their skills.

                Barely keeping them alive is not helping their views or anything they care about besides lemmy being improved. For transparency reasons I too would prefer to have separate fundraiser for ml directed at ml users but thats a different topic.

                Another important point is that reddit stans would want you to hate tankies grrr and not donate so lemmy goes away as one of the few alternatives. A alone would fund these two if I could just because fuck reddit.

  • Eskuero@lemmy.fromshado.wsEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    Doubled my monthly donation hopefully more people will do the same.

    I’ve been hosting my own instance for two years now without hiccups.

  • Tieas@lemmy.mlEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    Just did the $5 donation on patreon. It’s on a lot but I hope it helps, I might not agree with everything the founders believe in but I really appreciate this open sourced community and the ideas and conversations I’ve had on it. It’s definitely worth supporting

    • Nutomic@lemmy.mlOPMEnglish
      0·
      2 months ago

      I actually got in contact with them yesterday, will probably have a meeting soon to discuss how we can work together with them.

  • pineapple@lemmy.mlEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    I don’t really mind which way I donate but I want to ensure I donate by giving the most money to lemmy and not to whatever platform is hosting it.

    While I am not particularly interested in setting up crypto, aside from that which platform would you prefer I donated from?

    • Nutomic@lemmy.mlOPMEnglish
      0·
      2 months ago

      Liberapay is the best option, because it doesnt take any fees beyond payment processing, and its also open source. Thanks for donating!

  • tyfpgg@lemm.eeEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    Just started a small monthly donation. I’ll up it, if I use lemmy more, but I appreciate its existence. Thank you Devs for your contribution.

  • heavyboots@lemmy.mlEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    Literally all we need is everyone to kick in a couple bucks a month and I think everything would be in great shape. I think the user base is like 65k+ users currently?

  • pedroapero@lemmy.mlEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    Sent a modest amount of XMR (do so from time to time). Thank you for all the work!

  • arsCynic@beehaw.orgEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    Please stop accepting crypto"currencies"—multi-level marketing pyramid schemes—and I donate.

    What if I paid for all my free software?
    I’ve always felt guilty by taking for granted the rare breed of virtuous humans that provide free excellent software without relying on advertising. Let’s change that and pay, how much would I “lose” anyway? —https://www.arscyni.cc/file/take_my_money.html

      • arsCynic@beehaw.orgEnglish
        0·
        2 months ago

        FIAT stanning never went this hard.

        False dilemma. Being against wasteful greed-incentivizing MLM pyramid schemes doesn’t mean not objecting to the flaws of contemporary finance as well.

          • arsCynic@beehaw.orgEnglish
            0·
            2 months ago

            “Crypto is far less wasteful than the fiat banking fraud scheme.”

            Whataboutism fallacy. It’s not because serial killer A murdered less than serial killer B, that A should be forgiven.

            - -
            ✍︎ arscyni.cc: modernity ∝ nature.

    • OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.mlEnglish
      0·
      2 months ago

      If the Lemmy admins adhered to everyone’s request to “stop doing X and I’ll donate”, they would end up with zero more donations because people will always give another reason for not donating

        • OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.mlEnglish
          0·
          2 months ago

          I’ve donated plenty to Lemmy with crypto, and the article you linked addressed none of the reasons I use it (privacy, anyone?). So while it’s cool you’re passionately against crypto, I think Lemmy is getting more out of it than it’s lost

    • corvus@lemmy.mlEnglish
      0·
      2 months ago

      Faulty generalization That some scammers or greedy people in rich countries are promoting it like a ponzi scheme to benefit themselves doesn’t mean every person use it in the same way. Some people use it for its savings in a highly devaluating currency (my use case), others for money laundering, or to send money to Palestine, or to flee a collapsing country because of war and avoiding their money being seized by the policy at the borders, for ransomware, or creating circular economies in poor countries, to donate to human rights activists in dictatorships, to buy drugs, etc, etc these are just some of the dozens of verified uses cases. That’s what happens when a technology is free and permissionless, it’s not good or bad by itself, it’s as good or as bad as the person that uses it. AI is being used to scam people and to detect cancer more precisely than the best experts. That’s and inherent feature of free software. Lemmy is a perfect example, would you promote not using it because there is an instance used for child porn?

      • arsCynic@beehaw.orgEnglish
        0·
        2 months ago

        Faulty generalization That some scammers or greedy people in rich countries are promoting it like a ponzi scheme to benefit themselves doesn’t mean every person use it in the same way. Some people use it for its savings in a highly devaluating currency (my use case), others for money laundering, or to send money to Palestine, or to flee a collapsing country because of war and avoiding their money being seized by the policy at the borders, for ransomware, or creating circular economies in poor countries, to donate to human rights activists in dictatorships, to buy drugs, etc, etc these are just some of the dozens of verified uses cases. That’s what happens when a technology is free and permissionless, it’s not good or bad by itself, it’s as good or as bad as the person that uses it. AI is being used to scam people and to detect cancer more precisely than the best experts. That’s and inherent feature of free software. Lemmy is a perfect example, would you promote not using it because there is an instance used for child porn?

        It would’ve been a faulty generalization if, like knives or Lemmy, most use cases were benign. Unfortunately crypto"currencies" are predominantly speculative and malignant to society.

        • corvus@lemmy.mlEnglish
          0·
          2 months ago

          You know that what you said is pure speculation based on personal experience, random publications, ideology or mainstream and social media, which is the only way you can reach that conclusion, unless you have peer-review publications with the statistics of worldwide usage. If you lived in Africa you would say that Bitcoin is godsend, as you can hear it from many africans

          • arsCynic@beehaw.orgEnglish
            0·
            2 months ago

            If you lived in Africa you would say that Bitcoin is godsend, as you can hear it from many africans

            “[…] As already mentioned, imposing technology doesn’t work; struggling people know their needs far better than anyone. On the contrary, it seems that the “developing” countries should be telling us what do:

            • “The East African region has cemented its position in the digital economy as the global leader with the highest penetration rate of mobile money in the world.” —Daily Monitor (2021)[49]
            • “Finally, a number of telcos have managed to develop a superior client experience early in the evolution of mobile financial services in Africa. M-Pesa’s client experience is remarkably simple: it takes only three inputs and six clicks to send funds, on any type of handset. Registration is straightforward; merchant acceptance is widespread, and there are no transaction fees on bill payments.” —McKinsey (2017)[50]

            All without blockchain. Who would’ve thunk? For first world countries we sure think third-rate. […]” —Crypto Cult Science

            – – – – –
            Simply copy-pasting from my own website because of POSSE: “Publish (on your) Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere.”