this post was submitted on 06 Mar 2024
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I find it very questionable that you publish this sort of hit piece against Lemmy without even bothering to ask for a comment from our side. This is not how journalism should work.
Effectively you are blowing the complaints of a single user completely out of proportion. It is true that we didnt respond ideally in the mentioned issue, but neither is it okay for a user to act so demanding towards open source developers who provide software for free. You also completely ignore that this is an exception, there are thousands of issues and pull requests in the Lemmy repos which are handled without any problems.
Besides you claim that we dont care about moderation, user safety and tooling which is simply not true. If you look at the 0.19.0 release notes there are numerous features in these areas, such as instance blocking, better reports handling and a new moderator view. However we also have to work on improvements to many other features, and our time is limited.
Finally you act like 4000€ per month is a lot of money, however thats only 2000€ for each of us. We could stop developing Lemmy right now and work for a startup or corporation for three or four times the amount of money. Then we also wouldnt have to deal with this kind of meaningless drama. Is that what you want to achieve with your website?
The thing that really gets me with these, is that we are 2-4 devs working on software used by over 40k ppl. It is absolutely impossible to please everyone, and fix every issue, there just isn't enough of us.
Oftentimes we ask for ppl to do the open source thing, and contribute a PR, and many of them do.
Anyone can look at our github profiles and see how busy we've been, and how many moderation related issues we've been working on, this is all out in the open. Yet writers of these articles somehow never bother to look, or reach out to us for questions. The amount of entitlement and second-hand rumors is really dissapointing.
I've reviewed both your and @Nutomic's comments, your latest blog updates, and GitHub PR's, and added a section accordingly: https://wedistribute.org/2024/03/lemmy-image-problem/#giving-credit
Thank you for your hard work, and for taking necessary steps to improve something that is essential for instance operators.
Thanks that is a bit better. Unfortunately people who have already read the article wont see the update, and even people who read it now may not read all the way to the end, and still leave with a negative impression. Still its better than nothing.
To get an idea how most Lemmy users feel, have a look at this thread. Practically every comment is positive about Lemmy, you can hardly find any negative sentiment. And certainly no one cares about this image deletion issue, which proves that the complaints of a few individuals are completely blown out of proportion.
Thanks for the donation!
As a user, I love lemmy, and I want to thank you and the other devs that work tirelessly to develop it.
Also as a user I value the ability to manage my data, and hope to see image deletion implemented when you’re able to do so.
After having read the Nightmare piece, my decision was to stop posting images directly to lemmy. To share images, I’m going to self host an Imgur like service so if I do want to delete an image, I can.
I’m not a developer, and can’t contribute code to address the problem, but, at least for myself, I’ve got a solution I can implement.
To chime in: Yes, people are positive about Lemmy. I like Lemmy, people like Lemmy. And Lemmy users in general want to see activity at Lemmy. Who wouldnt? That's kind of a given... but still I want Lemmy to continue to evolve in functionality. That doesnt contradict itself?
And if someone points out that certain things arent technically possible at the moment, I as a user would expect that this isnt considered a "complaint" or a "negative sentiment".
Especially when it's a functionality that might have legal implications. Does "no one care" about that because people think it's unnecessary? Or because they have never noticed before that this isnt possible? The GDPR is not a joke, and foss does not have an exemption clause for adhering to it. Additionally a lot of people on Lemmy are very privacy-conscious.
Therefore I think it's great that this issue has been brought up now and you guys are working on a fix for that. Thanks for all of your work on this project, it's really appreciated.
https://opensource.net/right-way-contribute-open-source/
Its funny because there is no one in the world who signed any sort of development contract with us. All the money we have ever received for Lemmy have been donations which means there is no obligation for us to do anything. This includes money from NLnet which provided most of our income for the past years. And I bet the people complaining so loudly no have never even made any donation.
The day to day drama in corporate software development is MUCH more meaningless than what you're dealing with.
If you can take a moment to move your massive, fragile ego out of the way, you'll realize it's not a hit piece. It's criticism of your behavior in reaction to what is frankly a reasonable set of requests.
Journalism is not just about serving as a propagandic mouthpiece to lionize you and your work. Sometimes, I have to report on subjects that are frankly horrible, people acting shitty, and how people in spaces react to that.
This issue is basic fucking table stakes for user safety and data compliance, and the fact that it still does not exist after four years of being a project is wild to me. It creates liabilities for admins. The fact that it's still a problem, right now, illustrates that these things are not direct concerns in how you design software.
Your comments were in the GitHub issues.
So this is how you see me, all based on two issues out of thousands and never having talked with me directly. Honestly this comment would be a good reason to ban you for harassment and violating the site's code of conduct. But lucky for you I don't care what random strangers on the internet think about me.
No, it's how I see you based on pretty much any time I observe you making a public comment. Which is unfair of me, admittedly, I can't possibly see everything you write. Most of the time, though, you come across as hostile, and read as though you're dunking on other people and projects.
Anyway, the article was updated somewhat to give proper credit for your recent developments and point to your fundraising efforts.
Have a nice day.
The fact that the issue exists after 4 years clearly shows that you are in fact blowing it out of proportion. Actual issues that affect large numbers of people running servers end up being addressed by people contributing to the project. Lemmy is an open source project that anybody can contribute to, and fix the issues that are affecting them. The fact that this hasn't happened shows that this issue is not as high priority as you want to make it out to be.
This doesn't mean this isn't a real issue that should be fixed at some point, but it's simply not the show stopper you paint to be.
So yeah, you are absolutely doing a hack job here.
I think it's a dead lock. The replies show that they can't even understand the concern.
That's a typical death to a project. For, there will never be a moment for the team to address the concern. Whatever you try, the team won't move an inch.
I don't know what instance admins are thinking, but there's no point complaining at this point.
Wow, when are you going to realize that you work for your users?
This isn't "one user" being "so demanding". Its a trend. Read what others have said. Learn from your mistakes. Your community of instance admins are pissed because you're constantly throwing them under the bus. And, yes, your moderation tools are crap. Thats objective.
And 2000€ per month is a ton of money. Most open source devs get nothing. Stop being so ungrateful and disrespectful to the community that you work for.
This is your brain on consumerism.
What do you want for nothing, your money back?
Sorry if you were just making a joke, my sarcasm detector is not really working anymore (/s at the end would help). But if not, this comment really perfectly captures the entitlement in open source.
Now imagine you spend months (or even years) of your free time to build something for people to use freely, and the result is that you get endless comments from random strangers, telling you that you work for them and that you need to respect and be grateful to them. I honestly am impressed that open source still exists at all at this point.
I think it's a question of philosophy. If I take donations for something, is it really still my hobby projects I build in my free time?
Not really IMO. The moment I make money off it, it's more than that.
And if I have a community of people who use that project, I should be transparent with them and engage with them. Maybe the Lemmy devs are doing this in some place where I'm not (like on their matrix), but I have never seen them explain why they are working on certain features and not on others. Their development updates are awesome and I appreciate them, but it's very much a communication of "we are doing this, see you next time". The recent AMA was a good example of engagement that gives the possibility to explain things better and get into contact. My advice would be to work on communication and feedback channels.
But everyone is free to see that differently.
delirious_owl is a troll people stop feeding it.
Fam, this is Free Software. Capitalism is that way → www.reddit.com .