this post was submitted on 02 Aug 2023
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Sync for Lemmy
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The pool of people willing to buy an app for Lemmy is a lot smaller than Reddit, so it makes sense to jack up the price.
Fair enough. It's still a lot of money though.
Is it though? Itβs the price of a meal at a moderately priced restaurant or less than 2 months subscription of a streaming service, and you only ever have to pay for it once.
Considering itβs removing something it added in the first place? Yes
Ok, but how is that different from any other ad-supported media?
Because this one is built on the back of an anticapitalist project.
How is Lemmy an "anticapitalist project". I know the devs political orientation, but tech is tech, not really politically aligned by itself.
Besides, if it were anticapitalist, they should not have used the GPLv3 as their license, as it explicitly allows third parties to profit off the project.
Ehh... No.
My question is, what costs are associated with it? The app was essentially built, the dev needed to make some changes and link to the new API which should be free now? Generally curious, because I previously paid $3 for the pro app on Reddit.
Well, let's just do the math: the original pro version has over 100,000 downloads over it's 10 years of life. At $3, that means the dev earn at least $300,000 over 10 years, minus 30% play store fee. Let's say they earn at least $27,000 per year, which is almost twice the minimum wage at the very least.
Now lets do the math for Lemmy version: some metrics say we have 1 million users. Let's assume 10% of them are active users (100,000), and among those active users, lets assume 10% of them (10,000) buy Sync for Lemmy at $3 one time purchase (a very generous estimate). This means the dev will get $27,000 (after 30% cut from play store) from those users, ever. With this amount of money, the dev will need to earn their living somewhere else and abandon their app after a year.
I assume the dev didn't just make the app and think he can just retire, it was just one income stream for other stuff they develop and sell, but point taken.