@feditips @MaryPot
> "I'm concerned that if it becomes widely used, this will give more power, influence and funding to these developers."
That, I can guarantee you, is something you never need to be concerned about. The software written by the problematic Lemmy software developers have released the Lemmy server software under the AGPL software license. This means that by law the people who wrote the source code MUST allow completely free and unrestricted use of the software, to copy it fully, to change it, to take ownership of the code, to anyone who uses it, no questions asked. The only condition is that any copy of the original code (any "fork" as we software engineers say) must retain the original AGPL license.
Ironically, the license they chose to use for Lemmy is more protective of free speech than the developers of Lemmy themselves are. But the bottom line is, by choosing this license, the authors of Lemmy have relinquished all control of the software to the community at large. Attempts to change it could lead to litigation against them.
The authors of BeeHaw.org have issued a statement about the authors of Lemmy. People have asked them to fork the original Lemmy software so as to distance themselves from the problematic authors of the original code. They said, in a nutshell, they are open to the idea of forking, but see no practical need to do so yet.
> "Simply put we do not believe a fork is necessary at
this time."