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Yeah, because why should app developers get paid, right? They should all code for free at their local public library. Maybe live in a big ceramic jar like Diogenes.
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"Free" as in "freedom", not price. There's nothing stopping somebody from making money on FOSS.
Goddam Richard Stallman really screwed the PR up on that one with the "free" thing.
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The F in FOSS stands for free, IIRC. The ability to access, use, share the code, etc. has more to do with the open source part of the acronym. I haven't really seen anyone complain about Sync being closed sourced so far... Just that you have to pay not to see ads.
Ive only ever seen FOSS developers get support through donations. Which is nice and all, but likely not enough for an independent developer like ljdawson to survive on alone.
Dont get me wrong, I like FOSS apps too, but the experience almost always suffers to some degree; its easy to see why. I just don't get why Sync is being singled out like some kind of evil tech monopoly lately. As far as I can tell, its just an individual developer who released a great app for free (yes with ads, you're the product, blah blah blah) with an optional lifetime payment to disable ads completely.
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Free refers to freedom, not price. No part of "FOSS" has anything to do with money or price.
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Well then what's the issue? Because every complaint I've seen so far has been about the optional monetary facet.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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When you figure out how to make a living writing FOSS let me know
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Not writing, but building:
https://www.tindie.com/stores/bmoreautomation/
Open source hardware is a thing too. It's not many sales now but I'm still in the prototyping phase and actively changing things.
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It's more a limitation of the english language.... No distinction between free as in beer or free as in freedom... We're stuck with the same word
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Okay, I won’t push you from Sync. But if you have the money to remove its ads, please also consider supporting Lemmy directly or indirectly (Mozilla, among other things, funded the effort to find and patch TootRoot before it became a problem). If you don’t want to just donate, switching to Mozilla VPN will also help.
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I've tried a few of the other apps, and didn't like them that much. Sync is the first one I actually liked. Not sure if I want to pay for it, though
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You can have both!
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In my experience you can have:
- Good app that is free with ads,
- Good app that is paid without ads,
- Shit to mediocre app that is free without ads.
I've tried many alternatives, but so far the intuitiveness and beautiful UX of Sync stand apart from the competition for me. I respect FOSS apps, and even prefer them in some cases. But let's not pretend that its the best approach for every developer, or that anyone who releases a non-FOSS app is automatically greedy or sketchy.
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246 comments