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YSK: Lemmy has 53k monthly active users but only 1172 have ever donated (sh.itjust.works)

submitted 9 months ago by CowsLookLikeMaps@sh.itjust.works to c/opensource@lemmy.ml

35 comments fedilink hide all child comments

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/16660104

Consider supporting Lemmy development or donating to your local server if you have the means. Peace!

Liberapay (preferred)
Open Collective
Patreon
Crypto.

Stats source

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[-] ByroTriz@lemmy.ml 81 points 9 months ago

I'm no expert but 1 in 50 donors doesn't even seem too bad

[-] RogueBanana@lemmy.zip 40 points 9 months ago

Honestly that actually looks like a lot especially since this doesn't seem to include 1 time donations and donating to your home instances.

[-] Dave@lemmy.nz 60 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

I think the number is much higher if you consider all the people donating to their local server.

Plus your numbers seem off. For example, Librapay shows that there are currently over 300 people with weekly donations. Where are past or one time donors listed?

Patreon is paying out $2k a month, and has over 400 donors.

Your number seems much more like the number of regular donors rather than the total number of donors ever.

[-] leraje@lemmy.blahaj.zone 23 points 9 months ago

Right. My instance maintainer accepts donations via Ko-fi, which isn't even listed here.

[-] Dave@lemmy.nz 13 points 9 months ago

The links here are specifically the donation links to donate to the Lemmy devs. So even though they link to Open Collective, that's specifically the Lemmy dev one. There are others for other instances.

[-] leraje@lemmy.blahaj.zone 13 points 9 months ago

Sure, but the body of the post mentions donating to devs and instance owners. I'm being pedantic I know, but I think it would be a more informative post if it'd made clear what the donation numbers refer to and what they don't.

[-] CowsLookLikeMaps@sh.itjust.works 3 points 9 months ago

I just took it from the stats on join-lemmy.org. I'm not sure how it's determined.

[-] Dave@lemmy.nz 4 points 9 months ago

Yeah, that's the number of current donors with a regular donation. They have a goal of supporting 3 devs full time from regular donations, and this is showing their progress towards that goal.

[-] Undertaker@feddit.de 17 points 9 months ago

Surprisingly high number. Gold rate.

[-] lemmyingly@lemm.ee 13 points 9 months ago

Is there any transparency around the donations?

What's the sum of the donations?
What's the split between reoccurring donations and one off donations?
How many mouths does it feed?
How many of those mouths are full time?
What's the split between the mouths?

[-] dessalines@lemmy.ml 25 points 9 months ago

Our current donation amounts, summing from the various platforms, and live updated every few hours, are here: https://join-lemmy.org/donate

Currently we have 2 full time devs(nutomic and me, splitting ~1 dev salary, as you can see from the above link), and have 2-3 more that we'd like to add as fulltime to our little dev coop.

We're also in the process of getting another year of funding from NLNet (we'll announce this once its finalized), which will go to the new devs we're trying to onboard.

[-] lemmyingly@lemm.ee 2 points 9 months ago

Is there a difference between a donation and a sponsor? As in are the NLNet contributions included in that €4k value?

Since you've used different terms it makes me think they're different.

[-] dessalines@lemmy.ml 9 points 9 months ago

We sometimes get one-off crypto donations, but they're pretty rare. The totals on that site are the recurring donations / sponsors, which helps make it easier to estimate our yearly budget.

NLnet is separate from that above also, and was what made lemmy possible by letting us work on it full-time, for most of its history. We've been trying to shift to a sponsorship / recurring donation model, as that's more sustainable for the future, and will let us grow the co-op better.

[-] lemmyingly@lemm.ee -3 points 9 months ago

Ah okay, so it's not as transparent as it seems? It sounds like some of the contributions are hidden.

[-] dessalines@lemmy.ml 2 points 9 months ago

No, everything is transparent.

[-] lemmyingly@lemm.ee 3 points 9 months ago

NLnet is separate from that above also, and was what made lemmy possible by letting us work on it full-time, for most of its history.

Forgive my misunderstanding. I don't understand this sentence then. I read it as the NLnet contributions are not included in the €4k value. May you clarify please?

[-] lemmyingly@lemm.ee 1 points 9 months ago

Why have you chosen to not clarify?

[-] Wojwo@lemmy.ml 1 points 9 months ago

Excellent questions. I'd be more likely to donate if there was a page answering them.

[-] lemmyingly@lemm.ee 1 points 9 months ago

A Dev responded here https://lemmy.ml/comment/9565132

[-] romp_2_door@lemmy.world 9 points 9 months ago

I've just donated!

[-] CowsLookLikeMaps@sh.itjust.works 5 points 9 months ago

😎 <- you

[-] Gallardo994@sh.itjust.works 9 points 9 months ago

Good reminder. Subbed to patreon

[-] Dariusmiles2123@sh.itjust.works 8 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

That number seems a bit low, but it’s really important to support Lemmy and your instance.

I’d love to support my instance, but it ain’t doable for now (at least it wasn’t when I looked into it around Christmas).

I also think accepting donations demand some organization with taxes and everything. That’s why some instances don’t accept them.

[-] CowsLookLikeMaps@sh.itjust.works 2 points 9 months ago

Hey, if you can't swing it right now, that's totally OK. The beauty of FOSS is how accessible it is.

[-] Dariusmiles2123@sh.itjust.works 2 points 9 months ago

Well I can but my instance doesn’t accept money for now.

I guess all the steps you have to go through to accept donations are disuading some maintainers.

[-] RayOfSunlight@lemmy.world 6 points 9 months ago

Kinda reminds me of youtuber asking people to suscribe their channels because most of the users watching their videos are not suscribed, it's not gonna change, but in this case, it would be nice if people could donate, i personally can't, i wish, but i can't

[-] Eezyville@sh.itjust.works 3 points 9 months ago

I can and do donate to the Lemmy project. I should also donate to the instances I use. I'll donate for you as well, I don't even need Netflix.

[+] TCB13@lemmy.world -17 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

How am I supposed to donate to a project that forces me to select the language at the end of each post?

Fucks sake, is it that hard to have a dropdown under settings for the default language?

And to be fair, what's the point? The people running the biggest instances will eventually sell all their user's data to train LLMs anyways. There's no guarantee they won't.

[-] magnor@lemmy.magnor.ovh 4 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Since all instances mirror comments on subscribed communities you could simply create your own instance, leech it all and sell to LLMs. No need to go to the trouble of hosting a large instance.

[-] TCB13@lemmy.world 1 points 9 months ago

Or that.

[-] Andromxda@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 9 months ago

Fucks sake, is it that hard to have a dropdown under settings for the default language?

There is a language setting. Also, you don't have to select a language, it's optional.

The people running the biggest instances will eventually sell all their user’s data to train LLMs anyways.

Pure speculation, no evidence.

[-] TCB13@lemmy.world 1 points 9 months ago

There is a language setting. Also, you don’t have to select a language, it’s optional.

See you don't know what you're talking about:

I've my languages selected yet there's no option for a default language.

[-] marting@fosstodon.org 2 points 9 months ago

@TCB13 @CowsLookLikeMaps I sympathise, but perhaps they could fix that and many other issues if they had more funding. If it was already perfect, they would have less need for funding, I suppose.