F-Droid exploring to include paid apps, in-apps, subscription, and ads in app
Thoughts?
https://f-droid.org/en/2024/08/05/a-streamlined-and-sustainable-app-deployment-approach-with-mobifree.html#accounting-for-financial-sustainabilityOpen linkView original on r.nf
17 replies
Where do they say they're considering ads in app? Or you mean with developers including ads in their apps, not in f-droid?
Anyway, I am strongly in support of donationware as the model for compensation of developers. It allows all users to pay what they can whilst not discriminating against those who can't pay.
There's a lot of donationware that receives very substantial donations, and have more money than they would have had had they charged a small flat fee per user. I would never buy software except video games (just because there isn't a particularly expansive foss game suite and pirated games don't automatically update), but I have donated substantially more to foss projects than they could ever charge for their software.
I know free here means freedom not gratis, but I think paywalling software in any way is discriminatory and contrary to promotion of the commons, which is a big part of why I support foss.
I feel it's good and bad at the same time.
Good that you will have an alternative to the play store.
Bad because it erodes trust when money starts being the main motivator to do things.
I don't think this can end well if they go through with it. Another Playstore isn't needed - we ran away from it looking for an alternative. Another one will come along.
They should create P-Droid for that. Leave F-Droid as free.
$-Droid
I think paid apps are a good idea, in-app payments arent
Isnt the only reason to use f-droid foss apps? Like, if you want shitty apps with ADS and subscriptions, you might as well just use aurora store
Good. Developers should be paid for their work.
@Neon @10_0 I personally paid for FairEmail pro features, a little more that what they asked because their app is useful to my daily life. I felt however uneasy doing so because you just PayPal to a random email address, it would be better to have an official payment service for Foss apps though.
Same here.
YES. So many good apps that get abandoned. Donations are all well and good but I suspect they only really pay well for the high profile apps. If a paid app will keep a Dev motivated to keep it updated I am all for it.
Subscription apps can go fuck themselves though. (Charge me for the upgrades instead).
They support donations. The problem is when you force it. Also ads have lots of negative side effects.
I think the donation model is fine
https://blog.thunderbird.net/2023/05/thunderbird-is-thriving-our-2022-financial-report/
The fact of paying should only be done via donation not a obligatoire payement to access the service
This article is about Mobifree https://f-droid.org/en/2024/05/24/mobifree.html As far as I can see F-Droid mentions that it will be a contributing partner :
F-Droid playing a role :
Help to create the NGI funded project Mobifree :
I don't read that F-droid will force ads on F-Droid on users any time soon. I can imagine F-Droid will continue to exist as it is but I could be wrong.
OP and many others didn't spend a few minutes reading the post, and jumped into the bandwagon.
i agree with being able to pay devs directly in the store esp with some sort of privacy barrier, i pay, they don't need to know who I am but ads... why why why
If they want and find it necessary, they can, but I will no more give them support. The donations principle is good, but force them or anything else is really bad. The only way of offering a subscription is when proposing an other service than the app, as example a support with full-time people or an hosted service with their servers...