Yesterday, as part of the discussions related to Lemmy current inability to delete all user content I wrote a proposal: if enough people stepped up to help with funding, I’d take my work on my Fediverser project (which already has an admin web tool that “knows” how to interface with Lemmy) to solve all the GDPR-specific issues that we were raised by @[email protected]

The amount asked is, quite frankly, symbolic. I offered to work 10h/week on it if at least 20 people showed up to contribute via Github (which would be $4/month) or to signup to my instance (which access is given via a $29/year subscription). In other words, I’m saying “Give me $80/month and I will work 40 hours per month on this thing which so many of you are saying is critical to the project.”

So now that we have passed 24 hours, 58 upvotes and a handful of “that’s great!” responses, let me tell you how that translated into actual supporters:

  • Zero sponsors on Github
  • Zero signups on Communick.

Don’t take this as me demanding anything. I’m writing this just to illustrate the following:

  • The Tragedy of the commons is real. I can bet that at least 30% of the 60+ thousand users on Lemmy are proud owners of a pricey iPhone, and most of these are okay with paying for an app to use on their pricey iPhones, but almost none of them will even consider throwing a few bucks per year on the way of an open source developer.

  • The Outrage Mill is not a “capitalist” or even “corporate” phenomenon. People were piling on the devs yesterday for completely ignoring “such a crucial piece of functionality”, but no one actually stepped up to offer (or gather) the resources needed to have this problem solved. It’s almost as if people were getting more out of the discussion about the problem than working through a solution.

  • “Skin In The Game” is a powerful filter. No matter how much people will tell you that something is important to them, the true test is seeing how many are willing to pay the asking price. If not people are not willing to pay $2 per hour of work, then I can assume that this is not really important.

  • maltfieldEnglish
    1·
    9 months ago

    o hai. Curious that you expected a bunch of people to support you within a couple days. I never saw your proposal (buried in a comment thread in one post on lemmy). I’m only first hearing of this 6 hours after you specifically tagged me. I think you could do more to publish & advocate your proposals if you’re serious about them…

    Before the incident described in the article you’re referencing, I had never spoken to any instance admins. Since I published it, I have spoken to several instance admins (many reached out to me), and they all expressed similar frustrations with the lemmy devs and fatigue in contributing to this project.

    No matter how much people will tell you that something is important to them, the true test is seeing how many are willing to pay the asking price.

    I think it’s important to consider that there’s many ways that people contribute to Lemmy. Equally as important as the work that the devs are doing is the work that the instance admins are doing. Collectively the community of instance admins are contributing much more money and time into lemmy than the developers are. That shouldn’t be discounted. Both should be appreciated.

    There are other ways that people take time out of their lives to support Lemmy, such as finding and filing bug reports, writing documentation, answering questions about the fediverse to new users, raising awareness about lemmy on other centralized platforms, etc. These are also all contributions that benefits the project. Don’t discount them.

    But when our contributions are met with disrespect, it pushes us away. Based on my conversations with countless Lemmy contributors in the past few days, that’s where a lot of people are. They don’t want to invest any more time or money into Lemmy because of their previous interactions with the Lemmy devs.

    This can be repaired, but the Lemmy devs do need to work on fixing their Image Problem.

    • rglullis@communick.newsOPEnglish
      1·
      9 months ago

      Curious that you expected a bunch of people.

      The post had 200 upvotes. I said “let’s see if we can get 10% of these upvotes into actual support”. My comment got ~60 upvotes. Presumably, at least 60 people read that and thought “this is a good idea”.

      I wouldn’t be writing this if I had at least one of these 60 people converted into a real contributor. But zero?

      With the Fediverser mirrors, it was the same thing. The vocal minority was very quick to complain about “being flooded by the mirroring bots”, but there was also a good number of people who showed supported and said “this is an interesting idea”. There was also another group of people who would be in favor of the project if it could work as a two-way bridge. I responded “okay, you can show your support by sponsoring my work via GH”. A lot more than 24 hours have passed, where are they?

      Equally as important as the work that the devs are doing is the work that the instance admins are doing.

      Sorry, but I really disagree with this one. The amount of wealth produced by free software is multiplied by the number of people using it. Without the software existing, there wouldn’t be any instance to be an admin in the first place.

      (I also honestly have little sympathy for instance admins that run instances for free and then later complain about the amount of work. If the instance admins want to be valued for their work, they should drop the pretense of “community” and charge for their services accordingly. But this is a separate topic…)

      They don’t want to invest any more time or money into Lemmy because of their previous interactions with the Lemmy devs.

      I specifically mentioned that what I am proposing does not require direct interaction with the Lemmy devs. No work on their side is required.