I think the problem here is: When you realize that what you're doing has value to others you won't suddenly start doing it for free even if you can easily afford doing so. There may be exceptions from this like doing charity concerts as a musician, doing pro bono cases as a lawyer or helping your friend renovate their flat as a house painter and decorator. But in general I am pretty sure you won't go from taking money to doing your craft for free.
You do know that the two main devs are working full time on Lemmy and are getting paid to do so by the NLnet foundation?
The software developers equivalent of my argument above would be a developers who's getting paid for their dayjob but still does some work for an open source project in their free time.
It's not about never doing anything for free but about stopping getting paid at all.
I think the problem here is: When you realize that what you're doing has value to others you won't suddenly start doing it for free even if you can easily afford doing so. There may be exceptions from this like doing charity concerts as a musician, doing pro bono cases as a lawyer or helping your friend renovate their flat as a house painter and decorator. But in general I am pretty sure you won't go from taking money to doing your craft for free.
You are literally typing this in a platform developed for free
You do know that the two main devs are working full time on Lemmy and are getting paid to do so by the NLnet foundation?
The software developers equivalent of my argument above would be a developers who's getting paid for their dayjob but still does some work for an open source project in their free time.
It's not about never doing anything for free but about stopping getting paid at all.