I just don’t want the data collection and subscriptions.
Haven’t tried it but I just decided to put a recurring donation for aeharding on Github, Sync for Lemmy’s tracking-infused ad model and the pricing for the ad-free versions just convinced me that we need to support open-source devs even more.
I find it sad that lots of people seem to be excited to pay $20 for a closed-source app but very few supported the devs that have been developing the apps that carried us on their backs until now for free.
Voyager has only 22 sponsors right now and hasn’t even reached his $250/month goal on Github, while Sync for Lemmy is already asking for $100 for a OTP for the Ultra version.
EDIT: aeharding also just added a Liberapay in the sidebar!
People have a certain familiarity with Sync. I would pay $20 if “Relay for Reddit” were ported over. The other apps just lack a ton of polish unfortunately. Liftoff is the closest to being what I want (besides Sync).
Even still, I don’t understand the backlash against the Sync dev charging for his work. If he’s successful, others may see a viable path forward and follow him. We should WANT a variety of quality Lemmy clients out there for users. A good experience is how you gain/retain users. I’m also all for open source options for users. Users should have a choice.
It’s not charging people have issue with, but the initial subscription model approach to ads it took.
It might have worked for Reddit with its api calls they were charging for and the space of reddit generally being full on monetization of its users, but for something related to the fediverse it was off putting. And I think people here are more adverse to ads even being present in an app than paying.
Approach to subscription requests I’ve found best has been Christians approach with Apollo of having no ads but less features on the free version like limits to filters, no multiple account logins, and no submissions.
Do you think you could add a donate button in the app like Apollo used to? So I can give using my Apple account.
Voyager has only 22 sponsors right now and hasn’t even reached his $250/month goal on Github, while Sync for Lemmy is already asking for $100 for a OTP for the Ultra version.
I think this boils down to two reasons:
- Sync has more features than other lemmy apps out of the gate (since its a continuation of sync for lemmy). No waiting for features it just works, etc.
- The definition of a sponosor and the definition of a subscription have potential different implications. From my point of view sponsoring encourages development and acts as a way of saying thank you for your hard work. However it is important to note sponosoring doesn’t necessarily guarantee that you are entitled/owed specific features or support in a timely manor. By contrast when you pay for sync’s subscription the role shifts from a simple donation to a buisness relationship (in a sense). You pay $16 a year and now the dev (lj) is on the hook to make sure features listed in the subscription work for that year, responsible for any support queries, and as its his primary job incentivized to continue development (though you could say this last point is sort of equivalent to sponsoring).
I hope this post didn’t come of as a bit to dark, my view points especially on the community/developer relationship in a donation/sponsor context versus subscription context could be way off.
Curious on your thoughts (love the work on voyager 😄 )
Edit Just wanted to link photoprism (a opensource ai powered photos app) subscription policy (I think it does put a interesting case on subscriptions versus donations).
https://www.photoprism.app/membership/faq
Pricing (not sponsoring them or anything just as a point of reference):
How do you do this? How do you sponsor? I would love to sponsor aeharding
There’s a GitHub “sponsors” button in the sidebar. He also added a Liberapay link if you prefer it over GitHub.
They use GitHub sponsors. There is a link to support them listed in the readme on their GitHub.
