We already have Piefed and Mbin.

The Lemmy platform is just a tool to manage and delivery content. And I think it's important to differentiate the software from those who manages the software. I can see there's is a tacit connection and influence there. But unless they start baking inherently bias features into the software and skewing it, I don't think it's a big problem.

Also, because it's an inherently federated platform, if people don't like the opinions of those who run a specific instance, they can (with the inclination and determination) spin up their own instance and manage that the way they see fit. And that has happened quite a few times over the last couple of years.

So no, I don't think it requires a fork really. Not unless the people managing the main branch lose interest and the software starts to wither on the vine, or they start corrupting it somehow. But that's just my opinion.

You have piefed if you really want to. I personally am fine with developers having views I disagree with, expecting everyone to have the same views as me is unrealistic; if they tried to influence how you host your instance based on their views that's something I'd disagree, but they do not do so on Lemmy.

Maybe join piefed and if you want block ml.

There is Piefed, it's compatible with Lemmy instances and has a whole load of useful feature for both users and moderators.

Much quicker and responsive development (I've been able to get two small feature/improvement requests implemented within weeks of my initial issue post).

One of the Lemmy developers is also an admin on the notorious Lemmygrad instance.

I just wish .ml was more honest with their rules and policies, so people can actually make an informed decision, before they sign up there.

Once every couple months someone makes a post saying "I just found out the Lemmy devs are TANKIES! Won't someone do something about it?" No one has expressed real interest in forking Lemmy, though plenty of people have expressed interest in someone else forking Lemmy for them.

Most of the dev interest seems to be on Piefed right now. For some reason Mbin hasn't seemed to really take off, I don't see people talking about it as much.

Move to PieFed

I think that Richard Stallman is a despicable person. Never stopped me from using and supporting the development of Emacs and GNU tools for the past 25+ years.

I really don't like this dangerous trend of condemning actions of people based on wether we agree with them or disagree with them.

Because this behavior is at the base for intolerance and strong polarization.

First of all, I want to judge your actions for what they are, not for what your political views are. So Lemmy is good and I like that full stop. There will be better alternatives (maybe already are) and I will judge them without agreeing with their creators political views.

Second, I prefer to discuss and interact with people who have different views and political ideas than me, because that's where I grow my ideas and enforce or dispute them. Enough of the echo chamber where the "algorithm" already places us in every social fucking media.

Kids, it's by enforcing and supporting even the ideas contrary to yours that you grow up. Yes this is annoying and can cause serious brain engagement, but yeah, that's how we progress.

Even fascists or communist ideas. Zionist or pro-Palestine, pro gender or anti woke, if we start judging peoples actions only for their ideas we become fascists.

I was also tought that what you do is more significant than what you say. Judge by actions, not words.

So I don't dislike technology because the guy behind it is a fascist or a communist.

Said so, if anybody thinks that can do a better Lemmy by forking it, go ahead and let me judged by the actions.

The main advantage of fediverse over, let's say X, is that you can charge server if you find owner not trustworthy. So just do it, it's exactly why it was designed in this way, to let you do it easily.

But talking about funding... I might indeed reconsider doing this...

Reactionary forks don't have a great record of success (or even getting off the ground).

This has been rethreaded so many times I feel like it deserves an entry in knowyourmeme. Opinions are like asses, everyone has one, everyone things someone else's stink, in the end, what matters is you can support Lemmy without actually supporting the developers (eg.: support your local instance).

I have the mindset of taking any idea that works for yourself and use it for your purposes. Like we should be stealing ideas from big tech and foss-ing them. Id assume big tech is worse than this maintainer

But what would the fork look like? Finding the maintainer contribution and rewriting them?

The thought-police strike again.

Is the code good? Are you prepared to make any potential fork viable and useful in ways that Lemmy isn't so people have a tangible, non-ideological reason to choose your software over Lemmy? Do you have a long term goal for funding and maintaining a fork?

That said, Piefed is already a thing, and it federates with Lemmy. It's where I'm commenting from right now. It has a better on boarding process and does a better job surfacing things I care about.

I read an old thread documenting the opinions of Lemmy maintainers

For what it's worth, that thread is openly biased with many of those examples being strawman quotes and misframing events, like a non-sequitur troll post ban being framed as "support for Ukraine". And frankly, some of those points are cm0002 themselves intentionally trolling, like dubiously reporting a political meme as "Propaganda".

Personally I think the main devs are terrible at forum moderation. I'm aware that they're chronically overworked, and that .ml is not intended to be a neutral or liberalist general-purpose instance, and I'm aware that it's very normal for moderators to be bad at moderating, and yet that doesn't detract from my belief that they're technically bad at moderating a forum. For example, simply writing "rule 1" as a ban reason allows people to misinterpret bans as we're seeing here. Automate that shit, prefill ban reasons with the rule list! Make clearer rules and FAQs describing how memes and talking points considered normal in the US are actually chauvinistic propaganda!

As for a fork or rewrite, like others have said, alternatives already exist, but I also don't think this is a case where maintainer opinions are harmful to the user or project (even if I disagree with some). They're devout anticapitalists, which makes their FOSS and anti-enshitification positions clear, I know it won't sell out in five years. They only have power over their own instance, which one is welcome to not join or block.

So far no one who's able and willing to do the work for a fork has done it so I assume the motivation is low. There's aternate pieces of software mentioned here that have their pros and cons.

They are insane. But their views don't seem to ever make it into the code, so I don't mind for now.

What should we do?

There is no "we" and you can start a fork/rewrite if you want to, good luck!

I don't see the point in boycotting something that's free and doesn't make money off of selling my data. I suppose you aren't obligated to donate to it, but that was already true.

I suppose OTOH, I'm not pro-tankie, but I at least prefer tankies to the fascists and authoritarian capitalists (or whatever you want to call them) that run mainstream media. Harm reduction is the name of the game IMO, not finding a platform with a perfect set of political values aligning with yours (at least for me, I haven't run into many leftists who are also committed to nonviolence due to pragmatic reasons). The russia/ukraine stuff in that thread you link does look nasty, on the other other hand

Does the term "freedom of opinion" have any meaning to you?

Just don't give money to the instance they own that is pro russian occupation and pro china human right abuses