Use FOSS apps, guys.
this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2023
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Sorry, but FOSS apps won't catch on until FOSS developers actually manage to make them competitive with the mainstream apps. Most FOSS apps are visually unappealing, lacking in advanced features that users actually want to take advantage of, and are poorly-maintained by small, often single-developer teams who are slow to release updates and patch bugs.
Also, most web users are idiots, who should NOT be trusted installing apps outside of their "walled garden" app stores. While most of us here in this thread are probably more than capable of using F Droid and sideloading apps safely, the average user is not. So encouraging people to venture outside of the safety of their restrictive ecosystems is more often than not completely counterintuitive, as inexperienced users who sideload apps are more likely to have their data actually compromised maliciously (ie. ransomware attacks) than by apathetic advertisers who simply don't care enough to abuse you directly.
Don't tell people to use FOSS apps until there's apps that actually meet their needs. This sort of goofy, moral high ground that FOSS supporters use is off-putting for people who just want an app to check the news and post cat pictures on. It also minimizes the hard work that developers like the Sync dev put into their product; not everybody is a hobbyist developer, and some of them rely on their apps producing income in order to sustain themselves and their apps.
Like it or not, non-FOSS apps are a necessity. You don't have to use them, but you shouldn't try to force them onto others.
No, Reddit killing third-party apps and belittling mod teams is the reason Lemmy is what is is now, just like Digg killing off useful features and letting power users run amok on the front page is the reason Reddit is what it is right now.
Lemmy's existed for years. There've been apps for Lemmy. It wasn't until a Reddit exodus that Lemmy grew beyond a few thousand users. If it weren't for Spez going full Elon-mode, you and I likely wouldn't be here at all. We're not here because there was a good app for Lemmy a month ago, we're here because Reddit became a hostile environment to us.
I wasn't suggesting that paid apps are inherently better. Just that FOSS apps are often worse. They lag behind their mainstream counterparts in terms of features, support, and design. And while things like design may not matter to some, it really does matter to most users. Look at any of the top apps in the F Droid store right now, and look at the screenshots. Nearly every app on that story is ugly as sin, and looks like it was developed for Android 2.0. That's an immediate turn-off for most users.
Ask yourself, how many of those apps would you recommend to your parents? Say your folks want an app to manage their budget, can you find a FOSS budgeting app to recommend to them that isn't just unformatted tables of text? Literally every result for "budget" in F Droid is an app that looks like a spreadsheet, does nothing automatically on its own (like syncing your bank records), and requires the user to input every single transaction. They're no better than just using a steno pad and a 4-function calculator, so why would your parents choose that over something like Mint? How do you convince them to use something like OpenMoneyBox over something like Rocket Money?
Being a paid app doesn't necessarily make it better, but historically speaking, apps that produce a revenue stream for the developer generally have more active and long-lasting support in the long run, because they're being built by somebody whose livelihood literally depends on keeping a functional, user-friendly app up and running. Many FOSS apps are developed by hobbyists who don't have the incentive to stay active on the development side, which doesn't instill faith in the average user. Why would I invest my time and energy into a FOSS app that may go defunct in a year or two, when I can just install an app that does the same thing, looks nicer, does more, is easier to use, and has the backing of a company that is likely going to stick around for a while?
FOSS is great, but it's not the solution for everything. Some use-cases simply require an app/platform that has the backing of more resources behind it in order to function and provide a positive UX. It's super important to remember that people like you and me, who are a bit more tech-savvy, are a stark minority of the general population. The average user doesn't care about FOSS, or data security, or privacy; they care about the UX, which almost always takes a backseat in most FOSS projects. Things like the design, ease of use, and compatibility with their existing ecosystem are more important to the average user. And if you want Lemmy to be successful in the long term, you need to cater to the average user. Hence, Sync.
So you actually ended up proving one of the dude’s points:
Yeah, like the other guy said: your average user is not gonna how the fuck to self-host things, let alone go out of their way to get the extra computer or w/e to do so. I sure as shit don’t have the luxury of having enough spare change to grab a Raspberry Pi in order to have a separate server, and I sure as shit can’t afford to be running my computer 24/7 because electricity fucking sucks in my state and costs a lot compared to the rest of the US.
Also, are we just going to fuckin ignore that one of the apps you listed, Signal, is currently going through some shit right now because there’s been reports of that and other Android messaging apps being hacked and messages are being hijacked? FOSS brings a whole lotta good - and more good than bad - but it’s also pretty damn vulnerable because a bad actor could just look at the source code and then figure out what exploits and vulnerabilities a FOSS app might have. If you’re a dev and not aware of them, then you have to honestly rely on the goodwill of your userbase to say something - otherwise, it could go unnoticed for a while.
If you have the knowhow, the time, and the money and/or any spare stuff to use for any FOSS app or software? Yeah, absolutely - FOSS is the way to go 99% of the time. But don’t go “how FUCKING DARE YOU SAY NON-FOSS MIGHT BE SENSIBLE!!” when it legitimately does have a place in software ecosystems for the less tech-savvy users who might want something closed-source for peace-of-mind. But we also have to recognize and remind those devs that they need users more than the users need their platform - Reddit failed to see that and its users also failed to reinforce that in the large scheme of things it seems (so far). That is the root of the problem, not the killing of 3rd party apps and forcing users to use their closed-source apps (though that doesn’t help them a lot either).
Play store is definitely not a safe place for such idiots either.
It's not easy. To be competitive, you'll need to work on your app full time. I'm order to work on your app full time, you either have to be wealthy enough to work without pay, or have some form of income stream like donation, or employed by a company that want to sponsor your open source app. Essentially, we'll need money. If you look around, you'll see that there is not enough people donating to open source app devs (voyager, which is a very good app, hasn't even cleared $250/month donation yet).