There is a lot of discussion happening in the background of our project here. We could not anticipate all of the challenges that we were going to face a few years ago. One of the reasons for this was because we had no idea what our choice of a platform would bring.
Specifically, we chose Lemmy as the software that we would use to launch our endeavor to attempt a safe space for marginalized persons online.
In the first year or so, this choice was completely successful for a very small number of users. And then we all experienced an enormous influx of users when Reddit announced/implemented their shutting down of third party apps.
Since then there has been a huge number of people that have joined the Beehaw project. This tsunami of users initiated technical problems, and otherwise, that we could not foresee.
Thankfully and fortunately, we have had a couple of incredibly knowledgeable persons that have swooped in to ’save the day’ and keep this site running.
Unfortunately, these persons will NOT be able to continue to support the Beehaw project much further. They have life commitments and other factors, including careers and family life, that will prevent them from contributing to our project in an ongoing fashion.
All that being said, Lemmy (the software that Beehaw runs on) development is incredibly slow and is riddled with problems that makes administration/moderation very painful.
Therefore, we are left with some options that may feel uncomfortable to us. For example, we may want to consider leaving the Fediverse for another software platform that does NOT include ActivityPub. To explain, Fediverse/ActivityPub are very positive concepts on the foundational level. However, the Beehaw project is struggling to include this because most of our moderation/content/ethos is being jeopardized from OTHER federated instances (i.e. it, mostly, is NOT coming from within our own Beehaw registered user base).
The aforementioned persons, that have ’swooped in to save the day’, have been discussing/working with us to come up with the best solutions that would enable the Beehaw project to continue while NOT needing incredibly experienced/technically adept persons around.
Right now, we are testing alternative software platforms and evaluating them based on everything that we want Beehaw to become in the future.
Thank you all for your continued support of the Beehaw project and entrusting us to make this happen.
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I presume they would use the remaining balance to continue to fund the beehaw project in whatever form it takes
That money is to support beehaw the community not beehaw the lemmy instance. The lemmy instance only gets the money because it supports the community. So if the lemmy instance becomes unnecessary for the community then it gets shut down. The community can use the money in another way. Currently that money isn’t earmarked for anything.
Are you 12? I’m not rich and I don’t use Beehaw, but you should understand what an insignificant amount of money $4701.66 in modern times truly is…
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Both of you are great examples of why beehaw is thinking about defederating. Please try to be polite, as per the rules of this instance.
Because I live in the US, I’m a “colonialist” and rich? lol You’re misunderstanding. That’s a lot of money to *me" (as a non-rich person), but not to a corporation. Even a non-profit one could probably make that in a weekend with a few phone calls…
And an instance that from what I gather is host to several thousand users would require some significant hardware and support infrastructure which may consume $4,000 in a couple months of operations. Your situation may be unfortunate but to many trying to support a large community it’s a pittance.
this would just go toward whatever service we use since it’s all just site infrastructure money
Frankly as far as I am concerned they can do what they want. It is all for services rendered in my mind. I am not sure that many of us can fully understand the effort these people have put in. Very few of us, maybe none of us, are really pulling our full weight in terms of moderation effort and especially market rate man-hour costs. If we were, I am not sure this they would need to be thinking about changes.