If the reddit exodus happens and Lemmy gets even 2% of reddit’s daily active users, how will Lemmy sustain the increased traffic? I know donations are an option, but I don’t think long term donations will be sustainable. Most users will never donate.
I know the goal of Lemmy isn’t to make money, but I know that servers and storage costs add up quickly. Not to mention the development costs.
I would love to hear the plans for how to offset those costs in the future?
Hmm ok, I’m not that aware of how much tax and what general cost of living is in the countries the 7 people are living in, so I guess €4000 (before tax)/month could be enough…
It depends entirely where people live, even inside countries can differ drastically - as an example, I currently live on around £23,000 a year before tax (about €29,000) while living alone and have no issues and am able to save a decent amount. This is in the north of England, but if you were to go further south, you would need a bit more most likely.
The discourse on the internet is that you seemingly need some crazy amount of money, but the average wages of places are nowhere near the figures people give, and most people are living alright, even if it’s not particularly extravagant.
This isn’t to say people should be living on scraps or anything, we’re all underpaid at the end of the day, but the usual “6 figures is barely getting by” you see on many (US-centric) places on the internet is verifiably false in the vast majority of places.
while living alone and have no issues and am able to save a decent amount.
Right, so basically this means that Lemmy (the company) will only be able to hire employees if they are single, young and in areas with low cost of living. Do you see the problem here?
we’re all underpaid at the end of the day.
Sorry, it seems you are projecting here. Even if that were true, going with this “we are all underpaid, so others should accept that as a fact of life” doesn’t really ring like a compelling point to attract people to work on Lemmy.
the usual “6 figures is barely getting by” (…) is verifiably false in the vast majority of places.
The point is not whether people could (or should) live on a salary of X or Y. The point no one should be pricing their work in terms of what they “need to get by” and instead they should be pricing themselves in terms of “how much value does my work produce”. When you leave to employers to determine how much you “need”, you get exploited.
Right, so basically this means that Lemmy (the company) will only be able to hire employees if they are single, young and in areas with low cost of living. Do you see the problem here?
Yeah but working on an open source anarchistic social media link aggregator, will likely result in exactly these people. I don’t see a big problem there, open source is dominated by different kind of people/developers. Compared to “cozy” corporate jobs, the quality of code, in my experience is much more relevant (“code is art”).
So it’s likely that a lot more idealists, who don’t value money that much will work on something like lemmy. And being able to not depend on a corporate job (and being payed for the project you’re caring about, also if it’s just enough to get around) is a dream for a lot of these people.
When you leave to employers to determine how much you “need”, you get exploited.
The unfortunate reality is, that unless you somehow “force” the user to pay for something, you’re likely get way less (money). Open source donators and donations are a fraction of the actual user base, so you have to balance the actual income (by donations) to those people who dedicate a good amount of development time…
