As Dessalines replied, your assertion of losing donations is wrong.

But yes indeed, their views, those of .ml, and how both handle them, are driving some donors away. You're asking them to lay down their views, hide or change their opinions, separate from the vocal community on their server (noting that .world is just as vocal, self-righteous and self-assured), in order to develop the software that you use freely (well, that you might then donate to).

Honestly I feel that makes sense and nonsense at the same time. I can see it making sense in some circumstances; but personally I don't think so in these. Maybe the rhetoric I see on .ml just doesn't impact me the same as you?

But as an overarching argument that for the sake of Lemmy they should change... That just seems too much to ask, over the internet. Maybe to ask politely and accept a no. Maybe in person, one might argue and counsel strongly. But people are entitled to their opinions and the internet isn't actually such a good place to change them.

So if the devs keep devving Lemmy, let them. They're providing a good thing for us, and I hope more people donate.

As to the technical aspects, it just feels like an emotional outburst. FOSS projects' maintenance is always hard, and there are always difficulties. We do our best. They are trying to. And if a community came along that loves Lemmy and wants to develop it, they could either contribute or fork. Perhaps their fork would last longer? Perhaps not. But for now this Lemmy is here, and is Free, so we are glad to use it.

They’re asking for donations because they lost the donations they were already getting.

Nope, not even the tiniest bit. We know how vital lemmy is, and want to secure its long-term future by being entirely sustained by donations. We never at any point reached that goal, and given that nutomic had a new baby, this is more important now than ever.

hemorrhaging donation money

I have no idea what this means. We're paying our daily living expenses so we can comfortably work on lemmy without having to find other work. The costs are food and rent.

this whole operation is a way too flimsy if it’s depending on these two people, alone, forever.

I'd love to be able to grow our co-op, and add more developers! Donations make that possible too, especially if they exceed 2 average dev salaries (we're a long way off from that).

What happens if they finally get another developer that really knows Rust and wants to join the project but doesn’t “fit in”? How are they actually going to expand the team so this project can grow and not be so dependent on them when they have the reputation they do?

It's clear you've never tried, because we've never and would never reject code contributers for petty reasons like "not fitting in". If ppl don't want to work with communists, that's on them. Personally I'd never reject someone for their ideology, especially if what they're doing is FOSS, which serves the common good.

I would like to see this platform expand beyond them,

We don't stop people from forking lemmy and never would, that's entirely their right.