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 @maltfield@monero.town

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.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] rglullis@communick.news -1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

            
              It would be separate from Fediverser. I'm just mentioning because by working on it I learned enough about Lemmy's API and database to know that I can create a management dashboard that can work with the Django admin.
alien.top is not mirroring posts anymore. The reason I am not working on the two-way bridge is (surprise!) because no one who expressed interest in it has shown up to support it as well.
If you are offering donations on the condition that I do something that satisfies your expectations, it's not a donation. I'm not here to chase people around the internet for $4/month. If you want to hire me to do your bidding, my consulting fee is 250€/hour. Pay me that and I can do the monkey dance. Please don't ever come to me or anyone else with "do this and I will contribute". It's downright offensive.