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Beehaw, Lemmy, and A Vision of the Fediverse - Ruminations on the past and visions of the future

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  • IMHO you might be overthinking things a bit, while missing some other parts.

    First, Lemmy is a NLnet project funded by the EU. The lead devs don't work for free, and proposing "bug bounties" could be seen as competition and/or not in their personal interest.

    Second, Lemmy is two layers in a tech stack:

    • ActivityPub
    • Mastodon
    • Lemmy server
    • Lemmy client

    The focus of Lemmy devs is on the server side, with the rest basically a MVP to keep ongoing funding (NLnet funding is tricky on its own, the main two devs have little room to do anything they didn't get pre-approved for, if they want to get paid).

    There is nothing inherently wrong with that, but it means they are not "project leads" or "community leads", and they won't care about it either.

    What Beehaw seems to need, is one or two additional layers to the stack:

    • Mod tools
    • Community building (current mods seem to work fine for Beehaw)
    • Community features (seems to be a good number of bots out there)
    • Extra features

    This is not something the Lemmy devs are able or willing to do, so Beehaw and similar projects will need to add them, or find them somewhere else.

    I would suggest starting bug/feature bounties for whatever is needed, on a forked repo of Lemmy; take from upstream whatever works, and leave Lemmy devs to run their own show. Maybe call it "Beemy" or something.

    • That would be great to hear from the devs in response to why can't you work on feature? If the reason is because someone else is setting the software priorities so the devs can get PAID; okay got it. Instead we get the contradictory answers of:

      or

      So which is it?? The Lemmy devs priorities are their own and their priorities don't line up with most of the community; or their priorities are beholden to what NLNet says so they don't get paid??

      • So which is it?? The Lemmy devs priorities are their own and their priorities don't line up with most of the community; or their priorities are beholden to what NLNet says so they don't get paid??

        Both.

        NLnet works like:

        • You come up with a project, with whatever priorities you want, and split it into some tasks.
        • If NLnet deems it worthy, they'll pay you for each task they consider you completed successfully.

        Until community donations, or commercial services (which are compatible with NLnet), exceed what they're getting paid by NLnet, they're beholden to prioritize tasks that NLnet has agreed to pay for.

        If those tasks "don't line up with most of the community"... well, tough luck. The community is free to contribute or donate more.

        Yes, adding or changing tasks is possible, but it still requires NLnet approval to get paid.

        PS: in those threads there is mention of not addressing lolicon "pornography" as a priority... keep in mind NLnet projects are EU funded with an EU perspective, and multiple countries in the EU consider lolicon "fictional non-realistic" drawings as "not pornography". For the realistic ones, maybe @db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com could weigh in on the blocking statistics.

    • The focus of Lemmy devs is on the server side, with the rest basically a MVP to keep ongoing funding (NLnet funding is tricky on its own, the main two devs have little room to do anything they didn’t get pre-approved for, if they want to get paid).

      That's not actually true. You can discuss with NLNet and change your tasks midway.

      • You can discuss it, NLnet is under no obligation to approve any changes. Their philosophy is one of "we'd sooner return the funds to the EU rather than waste them on low return projects/tasks".

        I've done some research about projects NLnet funded (considering to apply myself), and some of the postmortem read like horror stories. People would ask NLnet to change tasks as a project evolved, NLnet would refuse, meanwhile people would spend their time on what they thought was best for the project, only to later find out NLnet considered some of the tasks unfinished and refused payment, ending up with people effectively carrying a project with extras, only to get paid for half of the original tasks and none of the extras.

        If I were to work with NLnet funding, you can bet I would focus strictly on approved tasks and be wary of changing any of them.

        • I am already working with NLNet myself and have been able to add new tasks. I am in the process of asking them to change some of them as well and onboarding more members. Let's see.

          • Yeah, I saw that, you're part of why I considered applying myself, keep up the good work! 👍

            From what I've read, the final results may not be clear until the end of the funding cycle, but maybe those were just some mismanaged projects.

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