Lemmy Developer AMA and Dev Update, 2024-01-26, 1500 CEDT (lemmy.ml)

submitted 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) by dessalines@lemmy.ml to c/announcements@lemmy.ml

435 comments fedilink hide all child comments

This is a chance for any users, admins, or developers to ask anything they'd like to myself, @nutomic@lemmy.ml , SleeplessOne , or @phiresky@lemmy.world about Lemmy, its future, and wider issues about the social media landscape today.

NLNet Funding

First of all some good news: We are currently applying for new funding from NLnet and have reached the second round. If it gets approved then @phiresky@lemmy.world and SleeplessOne will work on the paid milestones, while @dessalines and @nutomic will keep being funded by direct user donations. This will increase the number of paid Lemmy developers to four and allow for faster development.

You can see a preliminary draft for the milestones. This can give you a general idea what the development priorities will be over the next year or so. However the exact details will almost certainly change until the application process is finalized.

Development Update

@ismailkarsli added a community statistic for number of local subscribers.

@jmcharter added a view for denied Registration Applications.

@dullbananas made various improvements to database code, like batching insertions for better performance, SQL comments and support for backwards pagination.

@SleeplessOne1917 made a change that besides admins also allows community moderators to see who voted on posts. Additionally he made improvements to the 2FA modal and made it more obvious when a community is locked.

@nutomic completed the implementation of local only communities, which don't federate and can only be seen by authenticated users. Additionally he finished the image proxy feature, which user IPs being exposed to external servers via embedded images. Admin purges of content are now federated. He also made a change which reduces the problem of instances being marked as dead.

@dessalines has been adding moderation abilities to Jerboa, including bans, locks, removes, featured posts, and vote viewing.

In other news there will soon be a security audit of the Lemmy federation code, thanks to Radically Open Security and NLnet.

Support development

@dessalines and @nutomic are working full-time on Lemmy to integrate community contributions, fix bugs, optimize performance and much more. This work is funded exclusively through donations.

If you like using Lemmy, and want to make sure that we will always be available to work full time building it, consider donating to support its development. Recurring donations are ideal because they allow for long-term planning. But also one-time donations of any amount help us.

(page 3) 50 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[-] OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.ml 12 points 9 months ago

What other ideas do you have to increasing funding for Lemmy development?

load more comments (5 replies)

[-] hendrik@lemmy.ml 12 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

When and how are you going to address the thousands of open issues in the Github repository, that contain UI bugs, missing error messages (something looks as if it was sent for example if you send a direct message with too many characters, but actually isn't), backend issues and other assorted bugs?

load more comments (5 replies)

[-] J12@lemmy.world 12 points 9 months ago

Will there be flairs?

[-] phiresky@lemmy.world 11 points 9 months ago

I think flairs would be the same as user-tagging. There's an open proposal for post-tagging https://github.com/LemmyNet/rfcs/pull/4 and the discussion there was so far to add tagging for one type of thing and then later expand to others (like user tagging).

It's a bit of a complicated feature because it needs decision who can tag whom, and what is the scope (who is it federated two), and how does it transfer / interact with other ActivityPub software.

[-] threelonmusketeers@sh.itjust.works 12 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Where is the best place to propose new features for Lemmy?

Edit: And as potential follow-up, where is the best place on Lemmy to propose new features for Lemmy? (Not every Lemmy user has or wants a GitHub account)

[-] can@sh.itjust.works 12 points 9 months ago

I'm not sur eif it's bad form to answer these questions but for this one I think the github issue page is the answer.

load more comments (1 replies)

[-] syd@lemy.lol 12 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Sorry for taking up all the space :) But please skip the ones you wish.

How old are you guys? Can be a range if you want e.g. 10-15, 15-20 :)
Do you know each other IRL?
Which region do you live in? Like America, Europe, Asia etc.
If Lemmy had 100 million users, would you still try to remain anonymous?
Is there an instance admin you hate but can't say?
What percentage of users should ideally be in the largest Lemmy instance do you believe?
If you had the chance to change the name Lemmy, would you?

[-] CannotSleep420@lemmygrad.ml 11 points 9 months ago

Late 20s
No
Burgerland
I'd try but probably fail. I'm not big on getting public attention.
No
33%ish at the absolute max.
No, I like the name

load more comments (2 replies)

[-] silas@programming.dev 11 points 9 months ago

What has been the most rewarding part of working on Lemmy for you guys?

load more comments (3 replies)

[-] BlanK0@lemmy.ml 11 points 9 months ago

Are there any plans on adding features that enable easier interaction with other federated platforms like mastodon and peertube (for example being able to comment/interact with peertube videos and mastodon posts)?

[-] nutomic@lemmy.ml 11 points 9 months ago

You can already interact with Peertube videos and follow their channels. Thats possible because Peertube also federates groups (communities). With Mastodon thats not possible because it doesnt have groups, and Lemmy doesnt support content outside of communities. At least not without a full rewrite, which doesnt make sense considering that KBin and dozens of different microblogging platforms already exist.

[-] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 10 points 9 months ago

Will Lemmy ever become more of an organization? I'm slightly concerned about hostile take overs and or major changes that could be driven by personal views or bias.

Also a organization could facilitate cooperation and organize events.

[-] phiresky@lemmy.world 11 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Lemmy is somewhat protected by being an AGPL-licensed project, preventing proprietarization. If there's ever a relicensing effort, ba fearful.

I'm not sure what exactly becoming a organization would entail, but so far I'd say the development part is not really large enough? For me I would start being suspicious when a significant amount of dev power came from compan(ies), but so far no company has shown any interest afaik.

There's already been a few forks, for example lemmynsfw has made some changes on their side, which nutomic is now looking to integrate back into lemmy.

[-] dessalines@lemmy.ml 10 points 9 months ago

As a multi-national open source dev team, it would only complicate our lives to try to set up a more formal legal structure.

I wouldn't be too afraid of hostile takeovers: this is a dev-run-and-controlled project. People will go where the development is, and the federated nature of lemmy protects against the kind of attacks its possible to make against centralized entities.

load more comments (1 replies)

[-] OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.ml 10 points 9 months ago

Regarding funding - Can you give a detailed breakdown of what you've gotten per year and from which sources since you started Lemmy?

[-] TimLovesTech@badatbeing.social 10 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

I think most of that can be taken from here: join-lemmy.org/donate. If you click through each donation method they each list goals/monthly intake.

EDIT - Minus crypto of course!

load more comments (1 replies)

load more comments

this post was submitted on 25 Jan 2024

392 points (98.5% liked)

Announcements

2 readers

12 users here now

Official announcements from the Lemmy project. Subscribe to this community or add it to your RSS reader in order to be notified about new releases and important updates.

You can also find major news on join-lemmy.org

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

dessalines@lemmy.ml

nutomic@lemmy.ml