Hey folks!
I’m writing this because funding for the Lemmy project has dropped to critical levels, which could seriously impact its future development.
Thanks to the generous support of our lemm.ee community, our server infrastructure costs are covered, and we even have a few months of runway. I’m deeply grateful to everyone who has contributed - lemm.ee wouldn’t exist without your help.
However, infrastructure alone isn’t enough. Our servers run Lemmy software, and without ongoing development, the platform cannot grow or even be maintained.
Lemmy is an open-source project with many contributors, but the vast majority of development work has been carried out by a small group of core maintainers. A few maintainers work full-time on the project, relying solely on donations and occasional grants to support themselves.
I’ve seen Lemmy development up close, and the maintainers have consistently gone above and beyond what I consider the standard for small open-source teams - they are constantly writing code, mentoring contributors, and keeping everything running. Their work is essential, and without continued support, it cannot be sustained.
If you value Lemmy, please consider supporting its maintainers directly. Every bit helps.
Please check out this post for more details about how to support the maintainers: https://lemm.ee/post/63034576
Thank you for reading, I hope you have a great weekend!
I had made the suggestion to them that they could start offering some kind of managed hosting services for people running instances. I have a couple of instances running with a hosting provider. If I could have them running with the support of the devs then that would be awesome.
Working on Lemmy is already a fulltime job. Providing a managed hosting service would add another significant workload and leave much less time for the main development work.
That makes sense. You could always set up a simple print to order site and slap the Lemmy mouse on a bunch of stuff. I’d definitely buy something.
Do you know a good site for that?
A lot of people use shopify and then have the orders fulfilled by one of the many print on demand services. So once the store is set up then it’s basically on auto pilot as far as I can tell.
I’ve never done it before, but they make it pretty easy to set up a store and collect payments.
Shopify is a Canadian company so that isn’t an issue in the current political climate, but I’m unaware of any other issues people might have with the company.
https://www.shopify.com/blog/print-on-demand-companies
It could be fun to have a community design competition and have those designs available as well.
Good idea, thanks for the suggestion!