this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2023
920 points (84.3% liked)
Memes
45725 readers
1133 users here now
Rules:
- Be civil and nice.
- Try not to excessively repost, as a rule of thumb, wait at least 2 months to do it if you have to.
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I think people are complaining about ads because ads imply tracking. I don't know, I use Jerboa because I value the four freedoms, I'm not out here protesting non-free apps because the free apps work well enough for me.
AFAIK the way ad revenue works is dependent on trackers. Paying to remove ads on Sync also removes all trackers according to many people who have tested it; still seems to come down to not wanting to pay the developer.
Which is fine, of course. I just think framing the app as sketchy or something is completely misguided.
Donations don't generate nearly as much money as purchases. I like open source just as much as the next person, but there's no way that I could afford to drop my job and go full time into an open source project. Looking at Lemmy's donations for example, the annual budget on OpenCollective is, at this time, ~$10k (which is significantly below US minimum wage at least), and their Patreon link shows $1650/mo. It's a nice chunk of cash, but not sustainable.
One approach I've really liked is what Aseprite does. You can buy the precompiled product, or you can clone the repository and build it yourself. Most users won't build it, so they get paid and still get to share the code with the community.
Are Sync Free and Sync Paid Edition separate apps? Because if not, you still have some ad publishers framework on your phone and running. I'd guess it's Google, which means play services are required. That's a big no-go for degoogled Linux users.
The dev said that the framework is completely disabled once you purchase the ad-free version. Various people also confirmed that statement with anti-tracking software.