Hi, Mlem App Community.
As many of you have probably already seen, our founder David has left the project. We wanted to take a moment to address this news and any concerns it may cause within our community.
First and foremost, we want to make it unequivocally clear that we harbor no resentment or hard feelings towards David. We understand that he made this choice for his own well-being and support him for it. He was a joy to work with, and without his leadership or vision the Mlem app would not be what it is today or what it will be tomorrow. David, if you’re reading this: we thank you, and wish you all the best.
Development of Mlem will continue. All of us still on the the team remain as engaged and passionate as we were yesterday and continue to work tirelessly to bring you the best Lemmy experience we can. It is no secret, however, that this news was as much of a surprise to us as it was to you all, and it has introduced a couple of hitches in the short term. The GitHub repository where we store our code has been passed to another member of the team, but the App Store app could not be transferred so easily. We will be rebranding our App Store name to “Mlem for Lemmy”; the app will still appear as “Mlem” on your homescreen. As David mentioned, the current TestFlight beta has ended, and we will provide a link to a new one ASAP. The timing of that depends on Apple more than anything, so we cannot provide a concrete timeframe just yet. We’ll keep you posted with links here in this community.
We thank you for your patience, your understanding, and all of your support.
– The Mlem App Team
As a dev, I just want to express how much it warms my heart to see how kind and understanding the community’s response to this news has been. You all are the best <3
No. YOU’RE the best!
I’m not a Mlem user, but are you all worried about how much David contributed, and keeping up with it all? The UI looks the best out of all of the apps I’ve tested (Android user ;[), and seems to be more feature rich.
David contributed so much in part because he was working on the project as a personal thing for a long time before any of us came along. That’s what let us get such a quick jump on the Reddit migration–he’d already done the hard work of getting a working product off the ground, and gave us a foundation to build on.
Keep in mind also that the GitHub contributions only track code that’s been merged. We have a lot of great stuff in-flight or sitting in PRs right now.
In short: we aren’t worried.
as of the latest test build. this is in the 5 hours since you posted your comment. the project is in good hands, and we think you’ll enjoy the next TestFlight build!
They are changing the UI according to some GitHub Pull Requests
Best wishes and gratitude to David, and thank you for the update!
As much as I think he could have handled the transition a little more gracefully, it’s good to see an open source maintainer recognizing when they are no longer making their life better by working on a project.
So many open source devs burn themselves out by continuing to work on projects that no longer spark joy out of a sense of obligation.
This also should be a reminder to the community NOT to harass devs if a project is making choices you don’t agree with. The reason most maintainers contribute to open source is the hope that people will like and use their software. Getting messages that indicate people don’t like their work and won’t use their software is the quickest way to kill someone’s enthusiasm for their little corner of FOSS.
not just that, but demand customer support for something that was supposed to be a hobby
Thanks for the update and best of luck with sorting this out! Y’all are doing nice work!
I just hope the vision isn’t being changed to accomodate the tech nerds given how much backlash David said he got. People can be so cruel, even when you’re trying to do good. Fuck these people, whoever they are!
I was… so upset when I read that. just dismayed, really. I can assure you, unequivocally, that the app will continue being developed as a Lemmy app accessible to everyone, just as David first envisioned.
I’m really glad to read this.
I would hope for the opposite tbh. I would love for Mlem to be a streamlined experience so new lemmy users don’t feel overwhelmed. Apollo hit the sweet spot with that.
We’ll have another update out soon about how we’re moving forwards, but rest assured we have absolutely no intention of adjusting the vision.
What’s the context here? What happened?
Also thank you to the Mlem team for such a prompt and clear message to the community. You guys rule.
Thanks for everything Dave! Wouldn’t have made the leap to Lemmy were it not for the app you’d been a part of.
Thanks for the hard work.
Working on Mlem has been a real joy. Glad to see so many love it as much as us.
Can’t wait to get builds rolling out again!
David, you’re a hero for creating such a great app, and you’re a hero for looking after your mental health. Thanks for bringing the app to where it is now.
Could we get an introduction into who the new team lead is, what their experience is, and maybe some info on the rest of the team? The current repo owner has no information and has only ever worked on Mlem with this user account. Not exactly confidence inspiring from afar.
yes, there will be more updates to come. right now, since David turned over control of the project to the team, we’re finally testing new internal builds and getting ready to release a new public TestFlight build ASAP. once we get that out, we all be posting more updates about what’s going on with the app and with the team!
Test reply 1
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Thank you both to David for getting this project off the ground and filling a need in the community, as well as to the remaining team for their continuing development and support.
Only just got into Lemmy and I loved Apollo on Reddit so I can’t wait to see where this goes I wish you all the best
Since Mlem doesn’t actually support text and images in a single post yet, here’s a web link for those who can’t read the post: https://lemmy.ml/post/1444736
Keep up the good work and good luck to David and thank you for the amazing work you have done!
![[ Community Update ] - Regarding David's Departure 2023-06-22](https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/57db9247-39b2-401a-a8a5-86c825ba7838.png){kind=link}