I read an old thread documenting the opinions of Lemmy maintainers an the .ml instance. The issue of funding a project with people openly expressing opinions many find distasteful and it being the biggest reddit alternative on the fediverse came up, so here’s a topic to discuss it.
What should we do? What are the options?
Answer: No fork necessary, there are Piefed and Mbin.
Once every couple months someone makes a post saying “I just found out the Lemmy devs are TANKIES! Won’t someone do something about it?” No one has expressed real interest in forking Lemmy, though plenty of people have expressed interest in someone else forking Lemmy for them.
Most of the dev interest seems to be on Piefed right now. For some reason Mbin hasn’t seemed to really take off, I don’t see people talking about it as much.
Mbin is just kinda weird. I guess there aren’t too many people who are after a Reddit-like that also care too much about microblogging. Or maybe they do but the microblogging part of Mbin is just an inferior experience to Bluesky or Mastodon anyway? Or maybe people just dislike having to call shitposts in meme communities “articles” in “magazines”?
having to call shitposts in meme communities “articles” in “magazines”?
That is super clunky and I do hate it.
They are insane. But their views don’t seem to ever make it into the code, so I don’t mind for now.
No, I think they’re doing a great job.
The thought-police strike again.
How dare are you a communist😡😡😡 Accept freedom and democracy in your country 🦅🦅🦅
This has been rethreaded so many times I feel like it deserves an entry in knowyourmeme. Opinions are like asses, everyone has one, everyone things someone else’s stink, in the end, what matters is you can support Lemmy without actually supporting the developers (eg.: support your local instance).
You can use mbin if you want out of the Lemmy codebase, it’s a separate codebase that does the same thing.
Not only the same thing, some features are even better compared to Lemmy.
If you want to, go ahead.
But Lemmy isn’t a small project. Can you really bear the maintenance burden alone?
And Piefed & Mbin already exist, just recommend them over Lemmy then? They are also supposed to be easier to maintain, so fork them if you want to fork something.
Is the code good? Are you prepared to make any potential fork viable and useful in ways that Lemmy isn’t so people have a tangible, non-ideological reason to choose your software over Lemmy? Do you have a long term goal for funding and maintaining a fork?
That said, Piefed is already a thing, and it federates with Lemmy. It’s where I’m commenting from right now. It has a better on boarding process and does a better job surfacing things I care about.
I write opensource software, I donate to opensource, I use opensource. I however can’t do everything. That is why the question is “we” not “hey @gerowen@piefed.social why don’t you make a fork, you lazy bastard”. Code is not the only way to contribute to a project and I’m willing to donate to lemmy alternatives while it is still possible for me.
Piefed might be where I start donating. Gotta check it out first.
Why? If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
Reactionary forks don’t have a great record of success (or even getting off the ground).
Piefed already exists (although I contest the use of “reactionary” here)
It’s also not a fork
PieFed is not even a fork, btw, it’s a completely different software
Yes I know, but I was just speaking generally.
Move to PieFed
I’ll check it out. Thanks.
What is the difference with Lemmy? What’s better and worse with Piefed?
PieFed is newer so maybe missing a couple features with some clients, but in general is much better managed and more actively developed. It has some features above Lemmy already too. It will win in the end IMO.
Does the term “freedom of opinion” have any meaning to you?
Did the OP say they can’t have those opinions?
Just don’t give money to the instance they own that is pro russian occupation and pro china human right abuses
I don’t see a “we” in this, follow the free software way: Don’t like it? Fork it yourself or don’t use it.
It will become a problem for us if lemmy isn’t funded, won’t it?
Only if Lemmy was the only Reddit alternative. As so many people are saying though, it’s not.
e.g. PieFed not only exists but it has surpassed Lemmy in most ways in terms of feature development. And it continues to add new features at an astonishing pace.
There is no hope for “Lemmy” reaching the mainstream in my mind, but with PieFed leading the way, and Mbin also exists (that sounds mean so I’ll clarify: it has <1k users worldwide iirc), and yes a fork of Lemmy could be created if necessary, there is hope for the Threadiverse (federated threaded-based conversational platforms) overall.
Try out PieFed, even just the sign up wizard will leave you amazed. Donate to both its development and the operation costs of the instance that you choose (PieFed.social, PieFed.zip, several others to choose from).
