First post, honest question.

Who will pay for lemmy? There were a few sites that started sometime back because they were fed up with something about reddit but eventually they all crashed because they had no funds. How will lemmy be different?

  • AFK BRB ChocolateEnglish
    18•1 year ago

    Good answers here, but to summarize some points and elaborate on others:

    • Ultimately it’s the admins that choose to stand up an instance who are responsible for that instance’s costs.
    • The costs are well within what many hobbiests can afford, so some admins aren’t asking for help, but many instances have donation links in the sidebar or pinned posts.
    • The developers are also self-funded, and for many it’s a full time job; they also have donation links, and I personally think this should be a high priority for people who are able to contribute and want to see Lemmy grow.
    • Yes, a well-funded outfit/person can stand up a big instance with more resources than others, with intent to somehow turn it into a business (e.g, selling ads). That’s fine; no one has to go there if it’s not worth it, and other instances can defederate if they cause actual problems.

    I did a one-time donation to my instance admin and another to the developers for now. If I stick with this, like I think I will, I’ll probably do some monthly thing.

      • AFK BRB ChocolateEnglish
        6•1 year ago

        No company, it’s just them. To the extent they’re paid, it’s donations.

        • @[email protected]English
          2•1 year ago

          It says the developers are self funded but they are working all day on Lemmy it seems. So they are unemployed and working on Lemmy?

          • Malta SoronEnglish
            6•1 year ago

            They are funded by a foundation, NLnet. AFAIK they set certain development goals together and the devs are paid when those are reached.

          • @[email protected]English
            3•1 year ago

            That’s how a lot of open source works tbh, often devs have jobs to make money and work on their project in free time then if the project gains traction they start making enough off donations or whatever to drop their other work.