So right now I’m not in a financial situation that I can even possibly think about donating.

My general issue with FOSS is the guilt trip I go on when devs plead for donations – that’s MY issue, not any of the dev teams – but it plays a part in not using FOSS as much as I would like. I don’t want to sell my soul, but that’s about all I have to give right now so free ad-supported services and software are where I tend to lean to these days.

However, I am trying to put as much focus on supporting less shitty humans and buy locally whenever I can now. I didn’t realize the views of the devs of Lemmy until a few days ago and I’m a little concerned to be even using Lemmy as a whole as it shows some level of tacit support for the devs and their beliefs. If they weren’t open about it, obviously this wouldn’t be an issue but since it’s out in public it’s an issue.

I swear I have a point to all this…

Is Lemmy funded just by direct contributions from users or do instances take extra money from their donations and funnel it down to the main project?

If anyone is familiar with the various 12 Step programs, this is pretty much how those main programs get funded. The local meetings take donations that pay for the rent and any other expenses and then donate left over funds to the main service organization while keeping a reserve for emergencies.

If I were in the position to donate, I would feel much better donating to Lemmy.ee rather than the main project considering their views on certain political issues. I would not be directly donating, but if the instance donated extra funds I might be ok with that. It just feels different for some reason.