That's 85 per server. Without the free servers the price tag for running it would be: 425$ per month.
This seems incredibly low to run a site with so many concurrent plays and everything else.
What they have posted, is based on their say so with no supporting documentation and that document has been updated a few times, but not regularly as one would expect happens during a normal course of charity business (quarterly or annually). I've never heard of a legitimate charity that doesn't regularly have an independent auditor look over their books every few years and certify there are no inconsistencies (at a bare minimum).
All I was saying is, there are a lot of questions, and no solid information to draw any conclusions from.
They are a charity, and accept monetary donations, and many of these things are required practices for charities to combat and detect fraud.
If they wanted to run it as a hobby they don't have to accept donations or receive beneficial tax status, but then they wouldn't be making money.
That being said, its been my experience that there is something rotten in that group of people. Thibault likes to be the face-man, but there are others involved in running things as he can't be available all the time.
From what I've seen, the group acts and behaves similar to many businesses that have something to hide. Either some kind of fraud or other unlawful act going on. This comes as just an opinion because there are practices in the ways professionals conduct themselves, and then there is the absence of that.
Almost always in the absence of elements considered safeguards there is some kind of shennanigan going on, and from the little information they say, they lack them.
While, there is no direct evidence to support this opinion only because they don't provide anything, I do find the absence of certain things interesting.
Like for example, in a normal charitable organization, you have an annual budget, and a report of the actuals (what you spent), and its updated regularly in quarterly reports with minutes made and published by the board of directors (open for general outlays, and closed sessions for bidding/contract negotiations).
Yes, they have a budget, but its missing key pieces of accounting information and they don't publish actuals. From what I can tell its not updated regularly or with written minutes when it is updated.
Second, France requires certain things to open a charity/business bank account (to not comingle funds), and from what I can tell from public records Lichess hasn't done that.
So this brings on a flurry of questions I would normally ask when examining records like this such as, so whose account is the money being held in... are funds being comingled, are the items being rented at a colocation (individual) being charged more than regular price for such activity, are there elements of a kickback scheme, etc.
Lichess has built a lot of goodwill, but they also don't run things professionally, and when you don't run things professionally, it looks more like you are doing something wrong, more so than is easily explained as just an honest mistake.
I have to wonder what kind of scheme is going on because lets be clear, they wouldn't be doing this for more than a year or two if they weren't making money, and as they've been going for much longer than that there are questions that any reasonable person should ask, but anytime those questions get asked a concerted group of online others choose to downvote or denigrate.
It is so clockwork and mechanical solely based on model perceived sentiment, that it begs the question of if those people who are responding are even real because you can easily spin up a chat-gpt model to de-amplify one negative voice with sufficient infrastructure perhaps under the guise of public affairs/image management. Anyone who knows anything about IT knows that has been happening, just look at reddit.