Imagine you created your very first app. You developed the concept, workedtirelessly on the key features, design, tested it and fixed the bugs. Themoment has...
Developers deserve to be paid for their time though…
Sure for many it’s nothing but a hobby and they’re happy to create something for free. But that doesn’t mean every developer needs to do the same.
And yes ads are a privacy nightmare and putting them into your app is bad. So either you only use apps from hobbyists or you pay for access (whether that be a set price for a finished product or a subscription for a service).
Developers deserve to be paid for their time though…
If I buy you a free drink at a bar, say “hey do you want this?”, and you accept, do I then “deserve” to be able to follow you home afterwards and know where you live?
At the end of the day nobody held a gun to anybody’s head and forced them to develop an application, and especially nobody then forced them to give that application away for free.
EDIT: Likewise I don’t think developers of such free (as in beer) software owe their users anything beyond the basic expectation that their software isn’t malware.
Cryptomator is available on F-Droid but you still have to purchase a license to use it, although the dev has to maintain all the licensing and payment infrastructure which can be a roadblock for some.
If you want devs to make apps without any monetization you’re limiting the number of devs that will develop for your platform.
Free only means you only allow passion projects that people work on as a side project or only the developers rich enough to have retired already.
Nobody who is struggling to get by can spend all their time developing a free app that has 0 monetization.
So they monetize on Google Play.
If you care about breaking Google’s control of Android you should cheer on another paid marketplace, especially one out of the clutches of Amazon.
So?
The point of fdroid is not to have evil pieces of shit injecting their apps with spyware and ads.
Developers deserve to be paid for their time though…
Sure for many it’s nothing but a hobby and they’re happy to create something for free. But that doesn’t mean every developer needs to do the same.
And yes ads are a privacy nightmare and putting them into your app is bad. So either you only use apps from hobbyists or you pay for access (whether that be a set price for a finished product or a subscription for a service).
Paid apps are fine. I’m generally not OK with in-app purchases, because the overwhelmingly majority of them are abusive microtransactions.
Allowing ads is not OK. Privacy is a massive issue, but even without privacy concerns all ads are malicious.
Most F-droid apps are side projects people do for fun
If I buy you a free drink at a bar, say “hey do you want this?”, and you accept, do I then “deserve” to be able to follow you home afterwards and know where you live?
At the end of the day nobody held a gun to anybody’s head and forced them to develop an application, and especially nobody then forced them to give that application away for free.
EDIT: Likewise I don’t think developers of such free (as in beer) software owe their users anything beyond the basic expectation that their software isn’t malware.
F-Droid is literally just a repository. Linux manages it just fine to have repo driven “store” apps.
Cryptomator is available on F-Droid but you still have to purchase a license to use it, although the dev has to maintain all the licensing and payment infrastructure which can be a roadblock for some.
Free means freedom not cost.
The problem with online payments is that they compromise privacy and require use of proprietary software and centralized servers