1y ago

I like a good UX

Not hating on open source, just let people use what fits their expectations and needs and stop deterring them with gatekeeping :P

UX = user experience

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381 comments

This one dude has made this app for years and constantly updates it, fixes things, is responsive, and makes a great app. He's now been more loyal to his users longer than Reddit has, and I personally have used his app daily for 13 years.
Yeah, I'll happily pay for it.
FOSS is great but it doesn't pay the rent people, this guy is doing this mostly as his main gig. This isn't some huge corpo, it's one guy who makes his living building the app he loves. I'm sure he'd love to make it FOSS if he didn't have to pay bills on anything.
- FOSS can pay the rent. But the users that will complain about £20 for a lifetime of ad removal, definitely aren't going to be the ones that help him should the bank come calling about late mortgage payments.
  
  This is the same crap I left /r/Linux for way back in the day, so so so many people who are all "Linux is the best way and you're stupid for even considering windows or mac" but unable to see realities. Yes, of course I love linux and FOSS, I use it as my primary driver, but we live in a society where free work doesn't pay for housing.
  You're exactly right, most of the "FOSS Open Source supreme" people will look at an app that was lovingly crafted for months, call it garbage, and then demand they make it free. I just can't even with them.
  Meanwhile I'd love to see the stats on how many hours a week they put into FOSS apps on their own, and if they've given up their jobs to code for FOSS apps for the good of the community.
  I'm a developer. I code mostly proprietary stuff for my company. I'd gladly go code for FOSS projects, but so far my bank is just completely unwilling to cancel my mortgage payments, and my electricity, water, sewer, internet, they all want to be paid too, so unfortunately I'm stuck doing this.
  
  "Free and Open Source Software Open Source supreme"?
  
  Maybe it was a tongue-in-cheek recursive acronym
  
  It's either a pizza or a Taco Bell menu item
  
  Seriously, I honestly feel like this is a bad look for Lemmy right now. Like who cares how people enjoy Lemmy? Also, why do people care so much about how others spend their money?
  Some of these people don't even realize they are using a closed source app (connect) and have no problem with it, but when price is introduced all of a sudden people are up in arms.
  Don't like the price? Continue to use Sync(with ads) or use the other plethora of FOSS alternatives.
  
  These are the people that read Marx and then have a whole new world view, but they forget to take reality into account
  
  I think the issue a lot of folks have is people like yourself always connecting it back to profit/salary. A large portion of us are interested in Linux/technology/foss for personal reasons and this corporate stuff not only reeks but makes enough noise to drown out better long term solutions. Yes I do it professionally too and yes I fight the good fight but we do what we need to do, this dude does not need to do this. UX really just isn't important when we're talking about expanding human capabilities, or I should say UX is important but pretty things aren't. My opinion anyway but I was raised to care about this stuff by one of those wizard beards so to see your attitude is prevalent just sucks, no disrespect and nothing personal.
  
  That's fine as your opinion, but it's not a popular one. Many people tried lemmy and left almost immediately because they want a better UI. We come from the old usenet boards so we know what UI was like back then, but now people expect a great UI/UX to use a service. So yes, I understand the principals, but we shouldn't demonize people who pay money for a better experience, and if you're a developer I'm sure you know that a good UX costs some money, but a great UX costs a lot of money.
  
  There's also a lot of younger techies on the board cause if you even got remotely deep enough you'd have to learn how to use those user board websites to solve your extremely specific problems.
  
  I'm all for FOSS (currently working at a company that contributes heavily to FOSS) and am a huge supporter/contributor of FOSS, but the level of entitlement and superiority complex that I've seen from many in the FOSS community (including yours) is highly unappealing, and at times frankly revolting. That's what truly reeks and stains FOSS.
  
  There's an expression I think about a lot, "You can't think when you're hungry"
  Unfortunately principles and ideals are calorie-free
  
  Took me a minute to process, but that is a powerful one. I'm going to borrow that. Thanks for sharing lol
  
  Entitlement? They've taken everything from us, not just software either, have some empathy. All proprietary solutions will die, we have a right to build for the future and we have a right to educate about it.
  
  I have no qualms about building for the future and educating. I fully support that. What I don't support is the brigading and the lambasting of users who choose to purchase closed or proprietary products. That is their right as much as it is yours to advocate for FOSS.
  If "taking everything from us" is the issue, there are appropriate channels and mechanisms to defend against that. If you don't want your FOSS software to be used in a priority setting, apply the correct licensing models and pursue legal paths. GPL-licensed FOSS is generally and effectively avoided by for-profit organizations. If you purposefully choose MPL or Apache for your license models, that's really your responsibility for legally protecting your FOSS IP. Apply the right licensing model, it is literally a single button to change it if your source is on GitHub.
  
  Lemmy doesn't have ads. If you have to pay to remove them don't you think something is wrong with that? Why not pay for the community and useful features instead?
  
  The ads finance the app, I think that's perfectly fine (in principle).
  I asked the dev a few weeks ago, this app is literally his livelihood. And he has a pretty good track record of delivering good software. Why not support him?
  
  If you think more ads is the solution that's good for you. Ads are society's cancer, so I have little choice other than to block it. (Paying to get rid of ads perpetuates the idea that ads are profitable. That's up to you.)
  
  So the three options for him to keep developing that we know of are 1) Ads 2) Pay for a license or 3) Fundraising. He offers 1 and 2, and 3 is well known to not work, seriously nobody donates. Check out npm fund and how so little people used it that they just removed it.
  If your only argument is "I deserve things that took a lot of time and effort for free" then you aren't getting much sympathy from me.
  
  If your only argument is “I deserve things that took a lot of time and effort for free” then you aren’t getting much sympathy from me.
  Well, the user is posting from the piracy instance
  
  ha
  
  Check out npm fund
  Instructions unclear, I ran the command and now I have a shitcoin called Bitcoin Cash.
  
  Off topic, but I just have to ask.. is your name a reference to the IBM database technology? Lol
  
  Could be.
  
  You're not paying to remove ads from Lemmy. You can continue using Lemmy ad-free on mobile via the mobile site or any of the other PWA's or native apps. What you're paying to remove ads from is Sync. The developer has decided that they need to be compensated to sustain the amount of effort developing and maintaining the app requires. If you don't want to pay that price with cash or your eyeballs then don't use it.
  Nobody is forcing you to use Sync, nobody is forcing you to see ads. The beauty of a platform like Lemmy is you have the choice to use whatever client you want. That doesn't mean you're entitled to any of them.
  
  So for one he's adding an option to fund your instance as well, but also just because it's an app doesn't mean that it also doesn't require money.
  Your argument doesn't come off as "so both should be free" but to me more like "oh yeah I'm surprised Lemmy doesn't have an ad option"
  
  Where did you read that he was adding something to fund instances?
  
  I've been on open source since the early 90s. I know damn well how people make money off of it and who makes money off of it.
  I support none of it if it starts including tracking and ads. It goes against the whole mindset. Google fanboys love it though.
  
  That's why there is an option to disable ads... Everyone wins unless they think this person's work should be distributed for free.
  
  Then pay to remove the ads. Someone has to pay at some point and it's either you or the guy already spending his time to make the app.
  
  How do you think OSS has been funded since the early 90s?
  
  Nope, because I don't have an issue with paying for something that I like and enjoy. Don't like to pay? Nobody is forcing you to. Stop lambasting others for their choice.
- Upvoted via Sync lol. FOSS is great, FOSS is irreplaceable, but for independent programmers FOSS doesn't pay the rent.
- I understand people's concerns and criticism over the use of Google-based ads, but I have no issue paying for no ads knowing how much work has been put into the app. I'm glad we have some great FOSS options as well (shoutout to Infinity and Thunder, among others!)
- FOSS doesn't mean your product/service/app is free to use
- You can make it FOSS and still have some sort of subscription for syncing between devices for example. Tasks.org did it like that.
  Not to mention that you can run something on donations like lichess or F-Droid and have some extra money.
  
  NPM did donations too and found that <0.01% of users paid anything, and the average for even the most used packages made on average $40 a month. That doesn't pay a full time fry cook, let alone developer
  
  I remember this being a problem on GitHub where developers would full on attack NPM packages that requested funding or donations in the installer.
  Core-js had a really rough ride with that one, and babel (one of their main users) could not spare any development time to work on it, in the absence of the single maintainer.
  It's kind of disappointing in FOSS circles how some just refuse to acknowledge that devs need to eat - not everyone codes open source software as a side/passion project in spare time.
  
  Yup, I remember the core-js debacle, one dude literally supporting the entirety of the internet, tried everything he could just to get some funding from literally anyone, that was the 40 dollar mark I got, he got 40 dollars to maintain core-js. I'm sure even Lemmy here uses it.
  He would receive threats on his github on this project he started for fun saying there were bugs, or they needed features, and he said he even received death threats for just asking for funding. Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, and Google all use core-js but none of them gave him anything for using it anywhere. He even asked them all if he could just come work for them and maintain corejs since they all use it so heavily, none of them responded. So he just gave up, and said basically screw everyone, no one wants to support me, my family has sacrificed too much for this project that no one wants to pay for, and he got a real job and stopped updating core-js.
  It's a sad story. Everyone here loves to praise FOSS, and if we lived in the Federation we'd be able to support FOSS simply by using it, but if you're using it and not supporting the developers then you're not truly a FOSS supporter. I'm really honestly ashamed with how people here have acted in this thread, principals are great but so few are willing to put their money where their mouth is. The donation button for Lemmy devs is right at the top, how many people in this thread have even clicked on it, let alone donated?
- The price is a bit steep for me personally, but I agree. I'm currently on Connect but the call from Sync is strong.

381 comments