This kind of gatekeeping and elitism is bad for Lemmy and for FOSS.
It makes this community a less welcoming place and leaves new folks with a bad first impression. Much better to be welcoming and let people learn/see the benefits of FOSS at their own pace.
100% agree. Going “haha, aren’t I COOL for NOT using this one popular app or software!?” contributes absolutely nothing and actively makes the community uninviting. I’m all for FOSS, but if a closed-source app is better than the FOSS options, I ain’t gonna knock on anybody for using it.
Also why even use an app outside of accessibility reasons? Been using Kbin on a mobile browser and it’s been a pretty good experience.
I’d given up on lemmy because every so I had tried was unfinished and unpolished. I tried sync and finally felt like the user experience wasn’t getting in the way of content.
I’d love to support foss, if a genuinely comparable experience existed.
I’m glad to say that sync has revived my interest in lemmy.
You should check out Thunder, even if you gave it a try at some point - it’s super polished and it’s gotten even better week after week. In my opinion it has the best compact mode of all the lemmy clients, as long as you don’t mind swipe actions!
Not OP, but I’ve tried thunder. It’s OK. Sync is light years above all other clients I’ve tried. (same with reddit as well) swipe actions? Sync is the king of swipe actions.
I was using Thunder last week until Sync’s open beta got approved and the User Experience and the interface of Thunder is nowhere near Sync. It’s a night and day difference, and a difference that would have made me use Lemmy less and less.
Thunder is like a month old - it’s still growing and will continue to improve with the community’s help :) if you think anything could be improved, definitely shout it out on the GitHub page!
I understand that it’s new, and it is definitely the best FOSS Lemmy app out of the dozens that I used. But it has a very long way to go to achieve the same level of User Experience that Sync has. It’s not even close and I don’t think anything bar a major UI/UX rehaul could fix that.
Dozens?? Do tell.
IMO FOSS has really great offerings when it comes to libraries or other highly technical code.
But something about either the community or incentive structure results in sub-par UI/UX. Obviously not a rule, but definitely a trend I’ve noticed.
Don’t forget the community’s reaction to comments like yours, why down vote him if he’s stating the obvious? FOSS projects often focus so much on technical features because everyone wants to flex their code-fu, but nobody gives enough time to UI/UX. Just look at pretty much every Lemmy web frontend, fugly webpages with early 2000s look-and-feel, usually slow and/or buggy, and with little to no user feedback.
Lemmy is just new. The best desktops that exist are FOSS.
That’s very subjective. I have yet to find a Linux desktop I like as much as MacOS, especially when it comes to WACOM drivers. The stylus response time/curve almost always feels wrong.
Also, I’ve worked with designers who can get something that looks and feels fully professional on a first pass, so it’s not just newness for Lemmy.
It’s been one year of this conversation, but I just found it now.
Sync has also made me use Lemmy more often, but I was still missing a good web environment until recently when I started using photon. It is the best web experience I had using Lemmy and now I’m using as a progressive web app.
Photon repository here! Give it a star or start contributing to it.
FOSS doesn’t need your support. You misunderstand the relationship. FOSS is looking out for you.
I see the upvotes but I cannot support this comment. FOSS could use a lot more support at every level, including users.
Username checks out. Wait I know this face from masto - I think I follow you!
I don’t understand how promoting FOSS in favor of proprietary software is bad for FOSS?
This is not promoting FOSS. This is mocking closed-source/paid Lemmy clients.
This is why I unsubscribed from the Android community. I love Android, I use nothing but Linux at home and really appreciate open source software.
But the FOSS…enthusiasm is starting to border on zealotry. It’s getting really unpleasant.
Try to tell the Linux users on here that you prefer to use Windows…
Or Chrome over Firefox
This drives me nuts. I like Chrome. It’s simple, it’s fast, the extensions I want run on it (for now), and I love the Google Account Sync because I have an Android phone. This greatly pisses off people for whatever reason, despite the fact I’ve never had a bad opinion about Firefox and love what they’re doing too, and I never criticize anyone for choosing Firefox.
As with everything open source communities need nuance and understanding, otherwise they start to feel like cults.
For whatever reason? They’re trying to DRM the internet lol. You’re certainly entitled to your opinion but there are some pretty big reasons to be mad at Google on a good day. Nobody should take that out on you but I understand the frustration. People letting things slide because it doesn’t bother them specifically until it’s too late is how everything keeps getting worse.
I had to leave the Linux memes community because I swear nearly every post was shitting on Windows. Yes, I get it. Windows isn’t all that great. But, much like Ios, it just works for what I need. And I haven’t had any issues that weren’t ny fault with it.
If the game I play most, and the number one reason why i go on my pc, works on Windows, but won’t work on Linux. Which OS is better for me?
I thought all this software war crap era was over. That was shit I cared about when I was 14 or something. Just let it herself use what they want and explain the benefits of alternatives, only if they care.
I’m surprised they don’t shit on macOS too lol
I tell myself that I like MacOS as it was my favourite desktop for years. Honestly though, it is the worst of the three at this point.
I use Linux as my daily driver, yet I 100% believe Linux is overrated. It’s great if you’re willing to put in the work to get it working well, or maybe if you have someone else to do all your tech support for you, but it’s just not a good option for the majority of people.
I hate when people keep trying to push it on Windows users, especially when they go on about how “easy” it is. It’s not. And doing that will get people to try it out with high expectations and then get disappointed when they try it out and that’s not the case.
I honestly feel like people who say this stuff either haven’t tried Linux since 2008 or went straight to Arch.
I use Manjaro as my daily driver and I never need to fix the system. It really does just work, and these a bunch of disyros out there that do.
The only thing you might find terrible is trying to run windows programs on Linux, to which I say: dual boot! Even with all the progress Proton, Lutris etc. have made, it’s still way easier to just boot into windows on the occasion you want to play games or whatever.
I switched to Linux last year, and I used Linux Mint, which people say is the easiest, and then KDE Neon which I’m still using now, which is definitely way better than Linux Mint but it’s still not easy. I’m fine with it, and I personally prefer it to Windows, but I could never imagine my parents or my friends trying to use it without help.
Dood the automod is wild… people getting banned for, “suspicious activity”… and then there’s no way to ask the mods why the ban.
Btw, the automod is ONLY a service from us, that you are getting notified when something got removed from you. If you mean the @AutoMod@lemmy.world
I don’t get the point of this.
Since when did Sync masquerade itself as FOSS?
Just use whatever you want. Isn’t that why we’re all here?
Is the Sync noise getting to you? Just ignore it. It’s natural since the app just opened up and there were a significant amount of Reddit refugees that badly wanted their app back.
I think it’s more the Lemmy userbase having different expectations than that of the Reddit userbase, with Lemmy being such a shift from Reddit.
I agree. SYNC will bring tons of reddit users to lemmy. I for one welcome that change.
Seems to me this has spawned a fair bit of discussion… Which is the actual reason we’re all here.
Sync has gotten a lot of buzz (I don’t understand why, even on Reddit, rif was always better anyway) and that’s always going to bring out the people who don’t agree, for one reason or another.
Don’t mistake an opinion you don’t share for anything beyond what it is. I could just as easily parrot your statement back: if you don’t think this discussion is productive, just ignore it. There’s plenty of other discussions to get involved with on Lemmy
Sync gained a big following because it had a core feature many many moons ago, when having constant cell service was much less common, it allowed you download and save hundreds of posts and all the comments while you were on wifi, so you could browse reddit offline, it did this automatically and in the background (based on your settings ) hence the name ‘Sync’. This was a killer feature back in the day, at least for me. As that became less of a need, the app continued to change and add a lot of nice features, like lots of customizations, random NSFW, a very good OLED dark mode, etc, so there was no point in switching to something else.
My .02¢
RiF was all I ever used. Never even heard of Sync until I migrated to Lemmy at the end of June. Fwiw, I found Connect rather quickly, and it feels almost exactly like RiF. Enough that it scratches the itch. I tried Sync for about an hour today… It’s fine enough… But I can’t figure out what it has that Connect doesn’t. Maybe it’s just that everyone who used Sync was just comfortable and didn’t want to change. I’m fine with it being a paid app, or subscription, or whatever dude decides to do to help support himself, too…I just don’t get the hubbub when there’s a perfectly excellent free alternative in Connect.
Yeah, Sync was fine, just nothing special for me. I’m pretty sure it’s mostly just people who want the same experience they had on Reddit.
I adapted to Voyager pretty quickly, and the only real issue I’ve had with it was that it didn’t handle it well when .world went down, but that’s improved enough now. I’m not the biggest fan of the swipe gestures, as they’ve made me accidentally vote on a lot of things without noticing, but it’s nothing I can’t get used to.
I don’t need it to be exactly like it was before. I’m satisfied with something simple that does the job.
I could use this same logic to talk about your comment. People are free to dunk on other apps, so why not just mute the post?
Sync is just so much more polished and feature-rich than all of these already… It’s exactly like how it was when it was for reddit, and it’s just one dev! I don’t mind at all paying for a fantastic app.
You guys are taking the justified corpo hate and extending it to talented individual devs just making a living.
FOSS isn’t about “corpo hate”. It’s about freedom. There’s a philosophy behind it. You can, of course, disagree with it, but I think you should know what you’re disagreeing with.
If the users don’t control the program, the program controls the users. With proprietary software, there is always some entity, the developer or “owner” of the program, that controls the program—and through it, exercises power over its users. A nonfree program is a yoke, an instrument of unjust power.
I’m talking about the community. A large part of the community absolutely is about gate-keeping and hating on corporations… and now devs too apparently.
A large part of the community absolutely is about gate-keeping and hating on corporations
I haven’t seen that at all. Hate doesn’t bring you far.
I have and it’s good and cool.
Well maybe not gatekeeping. But hating corporations…
Yeah, until he gets an attractive buyout offer from an SEO company who wants to get into data mining.
I mean, just change apps at that point? There’s no lock-in, worst case you lose what you paid to remove ads. No point getting worked up over hypothetical scenarios
Hating on someone based on unfounded hypotheticals is fucked up. LJ has always been very open with the community for the whole time Sync was on reddit.
Username checks out ig?
Wow, that is “hating” in your world? I wish I lived there. Take it down a notch, dude.
Yes, I am talking about potentials; potentials that simply do not exist in the FOSS world but happen every day with commercial software. A significant difference between an independent dev and a libre project is that you own the libre project. No one can ever take it away from you. You merely borrow it from the independent dev, and in that way, and speaking as a frustrated developer myself, every single one of them suck in all the same ways that every single corporation sucks. There’s no difference. That’s not hate, that’s pragmatic realism.
So what exactly is the problem here? If Sync gets bought and you don’t like the new owner, you can stop using it and move on…
Except that time he disappeared for the better part of a year because some people didn’t like his Sync for Reddit revamp.
I mean he had all the opportunity for selling Sync for reddit and take profit. I converted to Sync nearly 7 years ago when I bought their ad free version called Sync Pro. He made great improvements adding material ui and lots of desirable features for an already great app. From my POV he didn’t abandon the app, gave updates till the last day of its existence and was a great dev in general who was active in his sub listening to our queries . Maybe the people who knew him from those days are the ones who is supporting him now.
Tbh, I think this whole thing is being blown out of proportion. Part of FOSS and the internet in general is the ability to have choice over what you use and spend your time with. Just because Sync is out, doesn’t mean you can’t continue to use your FOSS apps. It just means that we now have an option for people who want to pay for a very polished experience.
I agree. Considering the backlash at reddit for nixing third party apps, you’d think people would praise all the options for Lemmy.
The reason I’m on lemmy is I WANT to use weird apps and see different things programmers do. It’s like the post is telling me just get taco bell when there’s a dude selling Mexican grandma style enchiladas out of a food truck and I can go over that corner restaurant and get some fire chimmi-chanagas.
I like weird stuff. So what about it? God damned people pushing some vanilla boring shit.
Just ignore them? I don’t see your point here at all. If you don’t want to eat Taco bell, don’t eat it???
Right, I’m on a third lemmy app, just saying my 2cents. What’s the problem exactly ?
What I find hilarious is that the Sync dev could have simply made a $5/month subscription for the Reddit app and continued on making a fortune from Reddit’s product, but instead told people to come here where there are no API costs…and then starts charging a subscription fee and massive one off payment lol. Oh and the app also has ads if you don’t pay, despite Lemmy itself not having ads lol
Just making a living from his great app. Completely fair.
You can get rid of ads with a one-time payment of 19.99$. Not a ‘massive one off payment’ at all. I have the subscription though cuz I want to support this fastastic app and dev.
Paid software absolutely has a place in the world. Evil companies producing evil software designed to build a monopoly and lock out FOSS apps do not. I don’t think Sync falls into the latter and I’m happy they’ve made the choice to be able to eat.
Couldn’t have said it better myself
Just commenting this for those that may think free software is referring to price.
Free software is diametrically opposed to proprietary software, and not paid software.
Free software is free in terms of libre, not necessarily gratis. And there are corporations and individual contributors to free software that do charge for their product and maintenance of it.
go memmy <3
Memmy is literally the reason I opted into the fediverse, such a beautiful UX/UI in this app! It feels like a true successor to Apollo.
I love over wefwef becuase that felt like a carbon copy of Apollo which I love but felt cheap
I’m really enjoying how Memmy takes heavy inspiration from Apollo but also takes it in its own direction
Interesting. Maybe at the beginning, when I first used it it felt not as good. But now it feels as snappy to me as Apollo ever was. https://vger.app I mean FKA Wefwef
First time seeing this one, looks very well made!
Memmy gang!
Love Memmy. It just works so good.
I tried Sync, and it didn’t scroll smoothly on my phone. So, I went back to Summit, which has been great.
But here’s an idea: let’s not get gatekeepy with apps. Use what you like. Freedom of choice is one major component of FOSS.
And summit isn’t open source either
It is not, which is unfortunate. Though you can sideload the APK directly from github and at least avoid the Google Play Store. It is also ad free, which is the primary complaint I have currently with Sync (yes those can be removed, but for a relatively hefty $20).
I like all the FOSS and community development of different Lemmy clients that’s going on, it’s really awesome and great to see.
But if Apollo was released for Lemmy, I’d subscribe to Ultra (or buy lifetime) in a heartbeat and only look at alternatives out of interest, not because I’d want to use them as my main Lemmy client. Apollo was just that good.
Views like this one feel pretty toxic and elitist to me. Let people use Sync if they like it. Let people use their Android phone unrooted if they are fine with it. Heck, let people use Windows if they like it.
To be fair, this should be the other way around. All these foss apps are the teletubbies because they’re clunky and have major bugs. Sync is the power ranger.
Yeah I’ve used all the apps in this post and Sync is just light years ahead of all of them right now. Well worth the 19$ to remove the ads
Kinda shitty to hate on Sync like this for not being foss when the dev never claimed it to be.
It’s always justified to hate on proprietary software
Sync isn’t some international conglomerate harvesting your data, it’s one dude’s passion project. Guy’s gotta eat and monetizing FOSS is real hard.
Might be a hot take but it’s also justified to try and make money from software development that is not prefatory
It’s not illegal to make business with open source software
It’s not illegal, but it’s not profitable.
Companies aren’t making squat from happy fans donating a token amount to show support of the software. Everything adjacent to the open source software is profitable (enterprise sales, support contracts, hardware, corporate sponsors/funding, and so forth), but you’re going to have a really hard time selling something to consumers when they can just as easily get it for free.
Well worth the 19$ to remove the ads
Sync has gone to subscription payments:
Profile -> Remove adsremoves ads permanently for 19$The Ultra subscription is for if you want to support the dev further.
Thanks. I hadn’t noticed that.
Connect is not broken that I’ve noticed after the first week or so.
To be fair they probably had most of the code ready, and just had to port it to Lemmy.
deleted by creator
Major bugs? That’s not true at all, unless you mean “no tracking” is a bug?
There’s only crashalytics on sync. No tracking.
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There are tracking for ads for AdMob and Amazon, it’s the first part of the privacy policy
Very good.
You can’t hit backspace on jerboa without it mushing words together
I just tested it and could not reproduce the said issue.
infinity seems pretty awesome judging by the short time that I’ve spent with it
You’re still stuck in 2002 or something? Most of the web is literally FOSS. Gone are the myths of free software being worse when the whole world literally runs on it.
(not op)
Sure, but in this case, most of the lemmy-clients (FOSS or not) are bad.
I have problems logging into my accounts (seems like some instances want my email as a username and many clients cannot handle this after I switched accounts), some clients don’t feature editing or deleting your posts, some clients don’t show my saved content, some clients don’t allow to see what you posted
Sure, much of this is because they started from scratch and will maybe surpass sync some day; but right now I couldn’t find something that isn’t worth. (didn’t try infinity yet, tho)
it’s not necessarily “FOSS is bad”; it’s just that the current lemmy-ecosystem is in it’s child shoes (I have the feeling this proverb doesn’t work in english?)
That said: I use Sync4Lemmy since 5 minutes and this is my first comment; so let’s see if/what it will deliver
Never heard that idiom before, (is it German?) Sentiment is clear though, I would probably just say “in its infancy” or something.
Also completely agree with your points. I’m a major supporter of FOSS but at the end of the day, I’m gonna use what actually works - the same as everyone else.
At the end of the day, software developers need to eat. If they get to eat because their compensation model is driven by donations either before or after you use the app, who cares?
(Fair enough FOSS is free as in freedom, not just as in free beer, but I think that is moot to a lot of people, as long as the market space isn’t crushed by anti-competitive buisness practices)
The bigger issue at hand here is negotiating fair API uses for instances and their admins, who also need to eat, and make the apps possible too.
Tried all the apps and none of them is polished and smoother as sync. If tracking is the issue then one time purchase disables everything. The sdk isn’t even loaded after the purchase. One time purchase is available. For people who want to support they can use the subscription service. For those people who want foss free apps, then another set of apps are available.
I’m a huge FOSS guy. I’d support any of the FOSS apps if they were anywhere close to as good and polished as Sync already is. Sorry.
More options is better for the community
Wtf, this isn’t about which app is better it’s about variety! The fact sync is part of a list of options is what makes fediverse great - seems everyone in the comments agree 🤷♂️ gtfo with this sync hate. I’m a big Boost fan myself but im stoked sync is finally ready for those that’ve been waiting for it! 🥳
Hahaha so true
-Posted from Sync™️ for Lemmy
Lol
- Posted from Sync w/ Adguard DNS
Good day to you fellow Sync user. I also concur.
