hi all!

so, I guess all the instances and the development itself are in need of some money to be run.

do all the instances need to survive on their own?

I’m not sure how it works in the background, but instances with a small community would still need to be able to mirror all the threads from other instances - if its community requests it
did I get this wrong?

I’m currently supporting the development through Patreon, but I guess sometime in the future l, it would be wise to split this with server costs for the instances.

or do I miss something?

thanks!

  • DessalinesA
    25·
    1 year ago

    Thanks for your support! We currently have a grant through NLnet, but it’s likely over after this year, and we’ll have to try to be fully community funded at that point. We might do yearly funding drives as that seems to be a good model that’s not too obtrusive.

    We’d also really like to add developers to our little coop, one or two especially that have already been making solid and consistent contributions.

    Here’s our donate page: https://join-lemmy.org/donate

    Liberapay is much preferred, both because it’s open source, and because it smartly splits payments among your dev team equally.

    • DessalinesA
      16·
      1 year ago

      As far as running instances, yes please fund your admins and moderators for their time! Reddit notoriously takes advantage of their free labor, but we should be treating our instance runners better.

    • nachtigall@feddit.deEnglish
      7·
      1 year ago

      and we’ll have to try to be fully community funded at that point

      Maybe the Sovereign Techc Fund is an option for you? On the applications page they mention “open implementations of communication protocols” and also social networking.

    • a1studmuffin
      4·
      1 year ago

      I imagine a lot of the early adopter Reddit refugees are web/mobile devs. Perhaps it’s worth putting a callout to them specifically to help out on the various GitHub projects if they’re looking to contribute?

  • archroy
    21·
    1 year ago

    If you can’t donate then it’s really helpful to just post/comment regularly. I think the main thing Lemmy needs at this point is just more content.

    • naeapOP
      1·
      1 year ago

      three idea was more, how the single instances can finance themselves. network traffic and storage need to be paid somehow.

      I’m not sure how the federated system works exactly and how much a small instance would need to mirror or pipe through, when the users subscribe to large communities on another instance.

      so I was wondering, how instances with a small user base can keep up financially - bigger ones can probably live of donations. If a small instance doesn’t need much space or traffic, because subscriptions on remote instances are directly handled on the remote instance, than this is probably no problem.

      I’m thinking of setting up my own small server and am not sure what exactly to expect…

      • mrmanager@lemmy.today
        2·
        1 year ago

        For me, I wanted an instance that is my own. So I set it up and I pay maybe 10 dollars per month for it. It’s not going to break my bank even if lots of users decide to join it. :)

        • naeapOP
          1·
          1 year ago

          thanks for the input!

          I just haven’t figured out, what happens if users on my small instance would join larger communities in other instances. does the small instance needs to mirror or route the traffic to the other instance, or is this only done through links and on the small instance is really only the stuff local users generated?

          • mrmanager@lemmy.today
            1·
            1 year ago

            You join a small instance and go look into Communities. From there you can search communities on any other instance if you know the link to the community. And you see that if you go to the instance and just look at the community. That link can be pasted into search on your own instance, or some other instance you are using (like mine, or anyones) and you will be able to subscribe to content from it.

            So it really doesnt matter which instance you are using… :)

            So on lemmy.ml you have a community called Ask Lemmy. Go into that one, find the link (https://lemmy.ml/c/asklemmy) and paste it into search on any other instance where you are a user.

            You should get a link, and you can click on it to subscribe. I think its amazing because it means all the instances are just like email servers really, and they can all talk to eachother.

            • naeapOP
              1·
              1 year ago

              thanks, but sorry, that wasn’t the question.
              I’m perfectly aware of the user end principle, but I’m not so sure about the technical backend.

              where is the data of remote instances stored?
              if this is synced to the local instance, than small servers would need to mirror remote content.

              but I guess, I’ll check the ActivityPub and Lemmy Doc/Code

  • sexy_peach@feddit.deEnglish
    11·
    1 year ago

    do all the instances need to survive on their own?

    At the moment yes!

    So the best thing you can do is bookmark your server and keep coming back to post :)

    • naeapOPEnglish
      5·
      1 year ago

      you seem knowledgeable, can you also help me with that?
      I saw some links to communities in other instances (bewhaw). how can I access/integrate them? I don’t find them with Jerboa on my server (lemmy.ml).
      I also tried it in the browser and didn’t see, how this could be done.

      • AddaEnglish
        6·
        1 year ago

        You can see this short part of Lemmy documentation for how the integration with other instances works.

      • darkfoe@lemmy.serverfail.partyEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        Go into search and type !community@lemmyserver.com (replacing the two with the required one of course.) Sometimes takes a few seconds, but it’ll pop up if your instance has not blocked the one you’re pointed to!

        I do my subbing through the webui right now just cause it’s easier.

          • darkfoe@lemmy.serverfail.partyEnglish
            5·
            1 year ago

            !programming@neehaw.org

            Well, I think the domain is more about bees than nees so that may be why :)

            But yeah, that particular community doesn’t pop up onto my instance when I search either for some reason - might be a glitch or their site is responding a little slow. I am subbed across to a bunch of their communities on top of lemmy.ml from my instance, so I can confirm this is how it works

            • naeapOPEnglish
              1·
              1 year ago

              yeah, the typo was unlucky ;⁠-⁠)
              but I tried the search several times with double checks - do got it right at least some times… ;⁠-⁠)

              thanks for trying as well with the same result - and keeping me sane!

          • AddaEnglish
            3·
            1 year ago

            Btw., the community tag you posted has a typo (neehaw should be beehaw). Is that a typo here, or did you mistype it in the search field as well?

            But, try to search in the webapp / browser with the full HTTPS link. That should work. But using !programming@beehaw.org works in my browser without a problem.

            There are bugs in Jerboa and federated community searches seem to be one of them.