Lemmy Development Update 2023-09-22
Lemmy Development Update 2023-09-22
Some years ago we used to post weekly development updates to let the community know what we are working on. For some reason we stopped posting these updates, but now we want to continue giving you information every two weeks about the recent development progress. This should allow average users to keep up with development, without reading Github comments or knowing how to program.
We've been working towards a v0.19.0 release of Lemmy, which will include several breaking API changes. Once this is ready, we'll post the these changes in dev spaces, and give app developers several weeks to support the new changes.
This week @nutomic finished implementing the block instance feature for users. It allows users to block entire instances, so that all communities from those instances will be hidden on the frontpage. Posts or comments from users of blocked instances in other communities are unaffected. He also reworked the 2-Factor-Authentication implementation, with a two-step process to enable 2FA which prevents locking yourself out. Additionally he is reworking the API authentication to be more ergonomic by using headers and cookies. Finally he is adding a feature for users to import/export community follows, bocklists and profile settings.
@dessalines is currently implementing a redesign of the join-lemmy.org website. He is also keeping the lemmy-js-client updated with the latest backend changes 1 2 3.
@phiresky optimized the way pagination is implemented. He is also fixing problems with federation workers which are causing test failures and performance problems in the development branch. These problems were introduced during a complex rewrite of the federation queue which was recently finished, and is thought to allow Lemmy federation to scale to the size of Reddit.
@SleeplessOne1917 is implementing remote follow functionality, which makes it easy to follow communities from your home instance while browsing other instances. He is also fixing problems with the way deleted and removed comments are handled .
@codyro and @ticoombs have been making improvements to lemmy-ansible, including externalizing the pict-rs configuration, adding support for AlmaLinux/RHEL, cleaning up the configuration, as well as versioning the deploys. These will make deploying and installing Lemmy much easier.
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.
- Liberapay (preferred option)
- Open Collective
- Patreon
- Cryptocurrency (scroll to bottom of page)
Looking at the Liberapay, it's shocking Lemmy only gets $332 a month to fund this entire social media. Compare that to the totally "grass roots" normal NFT growth where they immediately had millions poured into them from venture capitalist. As it turns out, actual grass roots social media without profit incentive isn't profitable! And that's how you know we're on the right path.
For as many users as lemmy has now, its kind of astonishing how little donations we have, like less than the average youtuber / streamer with a patreon. Its more when we sum up the other platforms, but I'd really like us to be able to add more full-time devs and grow the coop.
And not just us of course, but open source software in general needs so much more funding than its currently getting. If you use open source software, consider donating to those devs!
Once I finish the join-lemmy.org site redesign, I'll put a section on the donation page that sums all these up for transparency's sake, and we'll probably try to have a once-per-year donation push to try to make sure we get fully funded.
youtubers/streamers have a parasocial thing going with their audience that makes the idea of donating a smaller mental step for their audience (senpai might notice me if I donate type brainworms). FOSS projects historically have really struggled with funding, unless they're able to secure funding from an org/corporation.
For as many users as lemmy has now, its kind of astonishing how little donations we have, like less than the average youtuber / streamer with a patreon. Its more when we sum up the other platforms, but I’d really like us to be able to add more full-time devs and grow the coop.
Why look at youtubers when you can look at a open source project?, look at misskey which is very similar , it makes about 4k while having about 10k monthly active users, that's about 0.4 dollar per user.
Lemmy has about 40k monthly active users and makes about 3962 , about 0.1 dollar per user.
If you will push the conversation rate to be as high as misskey, that should give you currently about 16K a month (40k * 0.4).
I have a few ideas about how to increase it, i can open a issue throwing some ideas, for starter (I don't remember if i said this before) the part in the UI where people are suppose to learn lemmy wants donations (the little heart), is probably very hard to notice.
Maybe opt-in ads? It could be opt-in for both the instance and the end user
I'm not demanding it to be opt-in, just taking the assumption that you don't want to just put ads there, and that there would be a backslash if you just put them there
Or some kind of "lemmy gold"
I regularly comments from users who were not aware or the financial situation. Maybe "we" need to promote it a bit more. But it is 332 per week, not month. At the beginning of the last migration it stood at 40 something, so we at least got some traction.
Thanks for the update and thanks for the work guys, I really appreciate it
Thank you, all of that sounds like very good news.
Thanks to all the people working on this.
Thank you for the update 😁
Also devs please feel free to take a well-deserved break whenever you feel like - wouldn't want to see anyone getting burned out from spending the majority of available time working on Lemmy. I can imagine the reddit migration has shaken a few things out of order especially
Thanks for the concern. Personally I took plenty of time off during summer. Now Im motivated to code again, and honestly I would get really bored if I did nothing.
I contribute to lemmy in part because I would lose my mind if the only software I wrote that people actually use was crapware for my corpo job.
Great work. Thank you for the update Nutomic.
@phiresky optimized the way pagination is implemented. He is also fixing problems with federation workers which are causing test failures and performance problems in the development branch. These problems were introduced during a complex rewrite of the federation queue which was recently finished, and is thought to allow Lemmy federation to scale to the size of Reddit.
I can't wait for this to get into action! Separating the federation into a separate process with the ability of using a separate physical resource is so good!
Thank you!
We've been working towards a v0.19.0 release of Lemmy, which will include several breaking API changes. Once this is ready, we'll post the these changes in dev spaces, and give app developers several weeks to support the new changes.
Thank you for the update and the heads up.
How will this be announced, and what specifically does several weeks mean? Since Lemmy goes beyond Mobile Apps to all kinds of systems including moderation tools, auto-purgers, bots, CSAM, auto-subscribers, searchers, etc, breaking changes to the API can have far-reaching impacts.
Could something be set up specifically for breaking-change announcements where participants could be alerted? Even just a Breaking Changes issue that could be followed would work nicely.
Thank you again.
When we are ready to publish the first release candidate, we will make a post that lists all the breaking changes. You can follow !announcements@lemmy.ml via rss reader to get notified about it. We will also share it in different Matrix chats, and I'm sure it will get upvoted to the frontpage as well.
Amazing job as always!
Thanks for the update! I think it's a good idea to get the word out there more often on what's being worked on and how progress is going at a regular interval.
This week @nutomic finished implementing the block instance feature for users.
Thank youuuuuu!
Excellent work! Keep it up!
Great news, thanks for the update!
If these are API-breaking changes, shouldn't you bump the major version? https://semver.org/
I think you’re forgetting this:
- Major version zero (0.y.z) is for initial development. Anything MAY change at any time. The public API SHOULD NOT be considered stable.
We're reserving 1.0.0 for a mostly unchanging and stable API. That def isn't the case currently, as we've been rapidly adding features, changing api objects, etc. So minor versions (and usually not patch unless it's security related), signify breaking api or config changes.
v0 is usually the exception to that rule.
From that site: Major version zero (0.y.z) is for initial development. Anything MAY change at any time. The public API SHOULD NOT be considered stable.
Posts or comments from users of blocked instances in other communities are unaffected
Hate to say it but this makes that feature a little insufficient
Thank you for your work. I love seeing that my money actually goes to something great
Donated! Keep up the good work
Posts or comments from users of blocked instances in other communities are unaffected.
As other users have commented even in the linked Github issue, that is not what we want. If I blackhole an instance as a user, I want all content from that instance to disappear to include comments from users of that instance in any federated community which I am accessing locally via my instance.
ref: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/pull/3869#issuecomment-1720134515
"Question about this functionality, will user instance blocking make sure I cannot see anything anymore from that blocked instance? Because this is what I am looking for tbh, I want to be able to completely black-hole an instance. Like defederation an admin of an instance can do but on a personal level"
That/this is what we want as users.
I would say that that's is what you want. We don't have a survey on user intentions.
I for instance would like to block furry instances, as an example, but I have nothing against their users. I don't care if someone is into furry, I simply don't want to see it myself
Just adding another voice agreeing that I just want to block instance posts, not comments from their users.
If people really don't want to see anything from an instance then they should join an instance that is bit federated with the one in question.
If blocking all users from an instance does get implemented I believe it should be separate to blocking posts as they're very different use cases.
Completely agree. I can think of many examples of an instance whose content I don't want on my frontpage (foreign language instances for example) but whose users I still want to interact with in communities on other instances.
Strongly disagree. I want to block certain instances from my feed to remove posts I'm not interested in (eg NSFW, repost bots), but I have nothing against the users.
If users are blocked too, please add that behind a setting toggle.
but I have nothing against the users.
Absolutely, and in 12+ years of using reddit the only accounts funnily enough I've had to block are admin accounts, and I liken the above to users from other subreddits being able to able to interact in other subs until they either
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get banned by the sub /c/ mods
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individual users using the block function
Tarring users from instances is like using that SaferBot bullshit which I've never liked.
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You can join an instance that has defederated and it'll be exactly what you're looking for.
I agree with this. Instance blocking should be for that instance's content. If you are opposed to that instance's users' ideology then pick servers that match what you want.
To me what you are asking for makes no sense.
Exactly that, if i block an instance, i want it blocked.
Appreciate the work!
Just another note of thanks as others have put here. I really need to get more active in these communities, love to see this grow, great project!
I spend enough time on Lemmy, enjoying the spoils of your hard work that I couldn't not donate. Like others have noticed, the weekly amount at it's current level ($350/w) is embarrassing.
IF YOU ARE READING THIS, GO DONATE.
did you forget to mention the new Scaled sort? or is it not gonna make it into v0.19.0?
The post only includes pull requests which were active last week. Scaled sort was already completed earlier. It will definitely go into the next release, like every merged PR.
thanks!
Of the three platforms listed for recurring donations, which one gives you the best cut or is otherwise preferable for you to receive donations on?
