I wrote the first line of code for /kbin on January 14, 2021. Around this time, I started working remotely and decided that the time I used to spend commuting to the office would be devoted to /kbin. Throughout this entire period, /kbin has been a hobby project that I developed in my free time. It was also when Lemmy started federating. The full history is available on GitHub. The Polish instance - or rather its prototype - was created on 2021-09-08.
By the end of 2022, I decided to take this a bit more seriously. The work that had brought me much satisfaction began to tire me out - anyone who's experienced burnout likely knows what I'm talking about. I needed a breather and a sense of doing things my way. I had some savings put aside, so I could work on this full-time. The amount of code might not reflect this, but it's only a small part of the things that need attention in such a project ;)
I don't know if it had any impact, but on January 4, 2023, I received information that the project had qualified for the NGI0 Entrust program. I had applied for funding a few months earlier. Currently, I have outlined my milestones in the Roadmap. The plan was to gradually complete each stage (after finishing one of them, I can apply for a funds release). However, due to the situation and how /kbin has developed in recent weeks, I had to completely change my priorities. As a result, I have started each stage, but none is polished enough for me to honestly apply for a payout. I'll need to address this promptly.
The fact that I could take certain steps amidst all this confusion is solely thanks to your support. The kindness I've encountered here will be remembered for a lifetime :) My buymeacoffee account currently has 818 supporters, who have donated $11,320. This is a lot of money, and for a while, I'll be able to sleep peacefully, not worrying about maintaining kbin.social.
Nevertheless, this money is meant for project development. Every expense will be documented in monthly reports. If necessary, I can also provide insight into the invoices. Things have been so heated recently that I consider the spending over the past months to be a failure. Most of the costs need to go to S3+Cloudfront, where costs due to the traffic increased from $2-3 per month to $1,000. This is about half a year of basic servers in the current stack. But in hindsight - so much has happened that faster migration was impossible. However, this has certainly accelerated the process.
None of this would have been possible without the contributors and project guardians, and without Piotr, with whom we spent many hours and sleepless nights trying to stabilize the situation and bring it to its current state. This time we're much better prepared for potential surprises. I hadn't set the terms of collaboration before and I admit, I had some concerns when we arranged a call to discuss this. However, it turned out that within the foundation, Piotr introduced a "Pay what you can" financing model, whether it's $1 or $100 a month. As I mentioned earlier, this is a huge relief for me and we started from scratch regarding security matters.
Many of you asked me about the possibility of recurring support. I wasn't entirely convinced, especially since the current account balance should maintain the instance. However, I think it would be irresponsible of me not to consider it. /kbin has grown to a level where I can't foresee everything that will happen. It would be great if we could cover monthly costs with Patreon / Liberapay. All funds from Buy Me a Coffee will be transferred to this pool, but from now on, I'll treat it as buying me a coffee... or a beer... literally ;)
For me, this also means maintaining critical zones for the project. I see this as a long-distance run, so I've decided to allocate:
$100 monthly - donation to Piotr's foundation "Fundacja Technologie dla Ludzi" - I really encourage you to support it, they're really doing a lot for the fediverse.
$24 monthly - donation to Codeberg - a great ecosystem for free projects. We've been making quite a buzz there recently.
I also want to support contributors and creators around /kbin as much as possible - but I'll do this privately, and for now, I can only afford symbolic amounts.
Thank you once again for that. I will respond to your questions, but it may be delayed as I have a few important tasks I want to focus on. Soon we will also write more about the cluster and the conclusions we have drawn from creating infrastructure with Piotr. Then it will be time for the first release of /kbin.
I thought that donations going to you were going to be pocketed and spent on hard liquor, not for our benefit. I'm disappointed in you ernest, be better.
First and foremost: Thank you @ernest for your incredible work and dedication.
Pay yourself a salary. Whatever you feel is appropriate & covers your personal costs. Developing and maintaining /kbin seems to be a full time job (or at least will become one)
THANK YOU FOR YOUR TRANSPARENCY. That's why we are here. This builds such a huge trust with the community. Whatever you need, we'll be here.
Kbin has replaced Reddit for me, and for that I am truly grateful. Ernest, you've made something wonderful here. Please do whatever you need to do to make this effort sustainable so that we have a longer term place to talk to others and share the things that bring us joy.
Thanks for the update. In my opinion, your target should be to raise enough funds for you to be able to draw a reasonable salary along with supporting kbin's development.
I really like kbin and in very happy that there are alternatives to greedy corporations run by narcissistic morons (you know who I'm talking about). I really hope the fediverse can establish itself as a real alternative to the ad-infested hellscape that is modern social media. You're definitely making a positive impact here.
How much commissions do Patreon and Liberapay take?
I read somewhere that Patreon commissions are high, maybe it was Lemmy.world admin. What about Liberapay?
All funds from Buy Me a Coffee will be transferred to this pool, but from now on, I'll treat it as buying me a coffee... or a beer... literally ;)
I'm so happy to see that you're running strongly, and that my measly $50 that was intended to relieve stress will now be allocated to beer - which relieves stress.
@ernest, you have my monthly donation. I hope it helps. Let us know how else we can help. The community can support you as much as you're supporting us.
Do you have backups in place? What is your retention range? To you have copies offsite? In the event of a disaster, how long before you would have services redeployed and restored?
Thanks so much for all of your time and hard work Ernest! Even though I’m commenting from Lemmy rn (which is cool in and of itself!) Kbin is awesome and I think once the dust settles, my new favorite social medium :) I’m certainly gonna buy you a coffee, you’ve more than earned it lol
Loving the commitment, honesty and transparency!! You have done an amazing job, and I am confident that you are giving your baby (kbin) the best possible care and future.
But do be mindful of your situation and try to take care of yourself, we wouldn’t want you to have another burnout or something similar.
I'm super new here and honestly am pretty impressed with the UI and the cleanliness of kbin. Aside from my own growing pains finding new communities/instances it's been a very nice transition from my previous time sink. The smaller internet feels good, didn't realize I missed it until I came here. Feels like old forums without the vitriol of today in it. Really appreciate the work, enjoy the beer coming.
@ernest Really cool that you accept Liberapay! I activated a monthly donation! It's not much but hopefully if a lot of people do the same, that'll help you a lot! :)
You're an amazing human being and I am in awe of what you have managed to create! The Patreon was my easiest join ever and I'm happy to hear that buying you a coffee will actually buy you a coffee (or other tasty beverage) going forward :)
I am in awe of your commitment, long term. I think my jaw dropped with the transparency. It's so informative, it breaks down walls, and creates so much trust. I will help with as many coffees as I can! @ernest
Great work so far mate, it's take really exciting to see how far the project has come. I'm really happy with the hundreds of tickets we've managed to get through, from UI tweaks, new features to bug fixes.
It's still early days but each new thing we fix makes kbin a more useful and enticing offer, hoping a heap now people start using it so we can get it into more hands.