Melbourne

"Lemmy" is not a company in that context. It is the software we are using to run aussie.zone. Technically all of aussie.zone belongs to @Lodion (the domain and server were all set up by him). I've known him for over 20 years though so I think I am qualified to answer this.

He is working on the philosophy of 'build it and they will come'. And as to costs, he posts a monthly thread in the Meta community outlining what aussie.zone costs to run. People have donated enough money to keep it online for a few months ahead. It isn't free to run aussie.zone, but the monthly costs are still under $100. Yes, it costs money to host your photos, but it isn't much on the scale we are working at. At the end of the day, it is the users who are funding the ongoing costs of the site, so we have no need to advertise to you or turn you into a product. The site pays for itself.

Under the hood, Lemmy uses an off-the-shelf program called pict-rs to actually host images. It's pretty neat, and will allow you to simply paste a photo into the middle of your comment. It is super easy to use. Pict-rs will strip out the metadata from the photo before putting it in the files directory for Lemmy to share to the web.

As to ownership of copyright, I'm not a lawyer, so take this answer with that in mind. The setup of aussie.zone is clearly a service to users, and you should retain copyright ownership of your photo. We wouldn't have a leg to stand in if we went to court and tried to claim to own any of the photos uploaded here by others. By uploading it, you are giving us permission to host it. You are free to revoke that permission (tell me the photo url and I'll delete it from the server for you) if you wish.

Ultimately, we are a pair of computer nerds with full-time day jobs and families and Lemmy is not our source of income. I can't see running it ever being something done for profit.