Not hating on open source, just let people use what fits their expectations and needs and stop deterring them with gatekeeping :P
UX = user experience
This one dude has made this app for years and constantly updates it, fixes things, is responsive, and makes a great app. He’s now been more loyal to his users longer than Reddit has, and I personally have used his app daily for 13 years.
Yeah, I’ll happily pay for it.
FOSS is great but it doesn’t pay the rent people, this guy is doing this mostly as his main gig. This isn’t some huge corpo, it’s one guy who makes his living building the app he loves. I’m sure he’d love to make it FOSS if he didn’t have to pay bills on anything.
FOSS can pay the rent. But the users that will complain about £20 for a lifetime of ad removal, definitely aren’t going to be the ones that help him should the bank come calling about late mortgage payments.
This is the same crap I left /r/Linux for way back in the day, so so so many people who are all “Linux is the best way and you’re stupid for even considering windows or mac” but unable to see realities. Yes, of course I love linux and FOSS, I use it as my primary driver, but we live in a society where free work doesn’t pay for housing.
You’re exactly right, most of the “FOSS Open Source supreme” people will look at an app that was lovingly crafted for months, call it garbage, and then demand they make it free. I just can’t even with them.
Meanwhile I’d love to see the stats on how many hours a week they put into FOSS apps on their own, and if they’ve given up their jobs to code for FOSS apps for the good of the community.
I’m a developer. I code mostly proprietary stuff for my company. I’d gladly go code for FOSS projects, but so far my bank is just completely unwilling to cancel my mortgage payments, and my electricity, water, sewer, internet, they all want to be paid too, so unfortunately I’m stuck doing this.
“Free and Open Source Software Open Source supreme”?
It’s either a pizza or a Taco Bell menu item
I think the issue a lot of folks have is people like yourself always connecting it back to profit/salary. A large portion of us are interested in Linux/technology/foss for personal reasons and this corporate stuff not only reeks but makes enough noise to drown out better long term solutions. Yes I do it professionally too and yes I fight the good fight but we do what we need to do, this dude does not need to do this. UX really just isn’t important when we’re talking about expanding human capabilities, or I should say UX is important but pretty things aren’t. My opinion anyway but I was raised to care about this stuff by one of those wizard beards so to see your attitude is prevalent just sucks, no disrespect and nothing personal.
That’s fine as your opinion, but it’s not a popular one. Many people tried lemmy and left almost immediately because they want a better UI. We come from the old usenet boards so we know what UI was like back then, but now people expect a great UI/UX to use a service. So yes, I understand the principals, but we shouldn’t demonize people who pay money for a better experience, and if you’re a developer I’m sure you know that a good UX costs some money, but a great UX costs a lot of money.
There’s also a lot of younger techies on the board cause if you even got remotely deep enough you’d have to learn how to use those user board websites to solve your extremely specific problems.
Lemmy doesn’t have ads. If you have to pay to remove them don’t you think something is wrong with that? Why not pay for the community and useful features instead?
The ads finance the app, I think that’s perfectly fine (in principle).
I asked the dev a few weeks ago, this app is literally his livelihood. And he has a pretty good track record of delivering good software. Why not support him?
If you think more ads is the solution that’s good for you. Ads are society’s cancer, so I have little choice other than to block it. (Paying to get rid of ads perpetuates the idea that ads are profitable. That’s up to you.)
So the three options for him to keep developing that we know of are 1) Ads 2) Pay for a license or 3) Fundraising. He offers 1 and 2, and 3 is well known to not work, seriously nobody donates. Check out
npm fundand how so little people used it that they just removed it.If your only argument is “I deserve things that took a lot of time and effort for free” then you aren’t getting much sympathy from me.
If your only argument is “I deserve things that took a lot of time and effort for free” then you aren’t getting much sympathy from me.
Well, the user is posting from the piracy instance
ha
Check out npm fund
Instructions unclear, I ran the command and now I have a shitcoin called Bitcoin Cash.
You’re not paying to remove ads from Lemmy. You can continue using Lemmy ad-free on mobile via the mobile site or any of the other PWA’s or native apps. What you’re paying to remove ads from is Sync. The developer has decided that they need to be compensated to sustain the amount of effort developing and maintaining the app requires. If you don’t want to pay that price with cash or your eyeballs then don’t use it.
Nobody is forcing you to use Sync, nobody is forcing you to see ads. The beauty of a platform like Lemmy is you have the choice to use whatever client you want. That doesn’t mean you’re entitled to any of them.
So for one he’s adding an option to fund your instance as well, but also just because it’s an app doesn’t mean that it also doesn’t require money.
Your argument doesn’t come off as “so both should be free” but to me more like “oh yeah I’m surprised Lemmy doesn’t have an ad option”
Where did you read that he was adding something to fund instances?
I’ve been on open source since the early 90s. I know damn well how people make money off of it and who makes money off of it.
I support none of it if it starts including tracking and ads. It goes against the whole mindset. Google fanboys love it though.
That’s why there is an option to disable ads… Everyone wins unless they think this person’s work should be distributed for free.
Then pay to remove the ads. Someone has to pay at some point and it’s either you or the guy already spending his time to make the app.
FOSS doesn’t mean your product/service/app is free to use
Upvoted via Sync lol. FOSS is great, FOSS is irreplaceable, but for independent programmers FOSS doesn’t pay the rent.
You can make it FOSS and still have some sort of subscription for syncing between devices for example. Tasks.org did it like that.
Not to mention that you can run something on donations like lichess or F-Droid and have some extra money.
NPM did donations too and found that <0.01% of users paid anything, and the average for even the most used packages made on average $40 a month. That doesn’t pay a full time fry cook, let alone developer
I remember this being a problem on GitHub where developers would full on attack NPM packages that requested funding or donations in the installer.
Core-js had a really rough ride with that one, and babel (one of their main users) could not spare any development time to work on it, in the absence of the single maintainer.
It’s kind of disappointing in FOSS circles how some just refuse to acknowledge that devs need to eat - not everyone codes open source software as a side/passion project in spare time.
Yup, I remember the core-js debacle, one dude literally supporting the entirety of the internet, tried everything he could just to get some funding from literally anyone, that was the 40 dollar mark I got, he got 40 dollars to maintain core-js. I’m sure even Lemmy here uses it.
He would receive threats on his github on this project he started for fun saying there were bugs, or they needed features, and he said he even received death threats for just asking for funding. Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, and Google all use core-js but none of them gave him anything for using it anywhere. He even asked them all if he could just come work for them and maintain corejs since they all use it so heavily, none of them responded. So he just gave up, and said basically screw everyone, no one wants to support me, my family has sacrificed too much for this project that no one wants to pay for, and he got a real job and stopped updating core-js.
It’s a sad story. Everyone here loves to praise FOSS, and if we lived in the Federation we’d be able to support FOSS simply by using it, but if you’re using it and not supporting the developers then you’re not truly a FOSS supporter. I’m really honestly ashamed with how people here have acted in this thread, principals are great but so few are willing to put their money where their mouth is. The donation button for Lemmy devs is right at the top, how many people in this thread have even clicked on it, let alone donated?
I’m using Sync right now. I’ve tried a few different lemmy apps and this is the only one that actually works without bugs. Maybe because it’s a paid developers full time job and not just some free side project?
I do wish it wasn’t a subscription. Apps are generally a flat fee.
yeah I think I’ll go to the ad removal fee. it’s expensive but I use it a lot 🤷♂️
I originally did the monthly sub because I didn’t have an option and that was the cheapest, it is kinda pricey but it’s light years ahead of what I was using
also I’m a developer and I think the guy who made it has probably working like mad to make this, and if it’s his sole income and it got pulled out from under him… idk. it’s a gamble to not just go get a 9-5 and work on this instead
bro has to eat and I already donate to my local instance.
I love Sync but it’s worth noting some basic features aren’t implemented yet like submitting posts.
Wait… are you saying that you can’t post using Sync? Wtf.
bahahaha - all these people ready to hand over their hard-earned and you can’t even submit a post?
Dev’s built a lot of user trust over the years. He says it’s coming within the week. The app JUST released.
The point is, he’s already charging an exorbitant ongoing subscription cost and it isn’t even finished. I do not understand you people.
Comments like these really show you how much of Reddit has moved over to Lemmy. Annoying toxicity and all.
We may not like it, but this is what progress looks like?
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And?
He worked on it, you don’t even have to pay to use.
Lol
To be fair, a lot of those people are Reddit refugees that fled to lemmy.world and were fairly removed to begin with. I’m honestly not even sure why they left Reddit to begin with.
I wouldn’t say it’s entirely bug free. There are silent crashes and sometimes your position is lost but it works fine.
Dude, at least people don’t use Reddit is what I think about this situation.
Let’s be honest though, when everyone is shifting to the fediverse to avoid corporate shit, they’re more likely to gravitate to other things that are free and open and be less interested in something closed and for-profit
Everyone is always promoting that app, so I don’t understand why y’all are butthurt when anyone complains about it.
It’s almost like the internet is a collective of different voices and not one unified entity…
The three stages of a long-term FOSS user:
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How the fuck do I do anything? I’m so lost.
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I’ve somewhat mastered how to use it and became a power user. I’m happy about this, I’ve developed a sense of superiority over those who don’t use it, and will now promote it constantly to others like a goddamn cult. My SO has left me and my family has disowned me, but I don’t care, they are too ignorant to be as enlightened as I am.
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(A decade or two later) I don’t even give a fuck anymore what somebody uses, this still works for me, and what works for you, works for you. Let’s just all coexist. OS and app development models don’t mean shit, common standards and protocols between them do. As long as I, a Linux user, can email a PNG to a Mac user and they can open it, we’re good.
It’s been like this since the mid-90s. Most of the people who are being annoying about it are in stage 2.
I prefer my version of stage 3: I still care about software freedom and advocate for it (as well as related issues like interoperability, privacy, and right to repair) but without being an obnoxious fanboy for “Linux” or talking down to people who still use non-free technology for whatever reason.
Simply caring about an issue doesn’t make one a cultist or zealot, and not caring about anything does not make one enlightened.
I have the (perhaps irrational) fear that sitting too comfortably in stage 3 leads to the kind of complacency that allows things like Web Environment Integrity to escape the “shower thought” phase.
On principle I believe that people shouldn’t feel forced to restrict themselves to FOSS - I use Steam and barely ever pirate games
(ignore my Lemmy instance I guess); however, I think people should put some effort in understanding the consequences of always choosing the path of least resistance, at the very least.That’s not an issue with FOSS vs proprietary, but with large corporations needing to be broken up.
FOSS isn’t immune to that, its a known thing that large corporations can use their dominance of a market segment to infiltrate even totally open standards and make demands with the threat of leaving the standard (and therefore resigning it to becoming irrelevant).
This is especially true of web standards. Chromium is FOSS, yet Google can use its absolute dominance in the market place to force through changes to things like HTTP standards (also FOSS). My understanding is Microsoft and Google both have strong-armed stuff into C++ in the past as well
Thank you. Exactly what is happening and why I’m so exhausted. Feels like the stupid Mac vs Windows debates back in the day, with the even more annoying Linux users.
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I’m at 3 and it’s been quite annoying all these posts about people pushing Sync glory, saying that every other app is basically a buggy garbage (I’m exaggerating). Like, dude, I enjoy the other apps and I am not having bugs, can you enjoy your app without belittling others? Thanks?
Maybe the reason some people are pissy with Sync is because even with their community blocked it’s bloody everywhere on the all feed. Like guys I get it you like it but pls stop.
Launch hype is always like that. Give it a week and things will settle down.
So it’s just growing up and becoming a more mature person? Don’t think that applies specifically to FOSS enthusiasts. The same could be said about coffee hobbyists, for example.
I’m currently a mix between 1 and 3. Learning 2, but not the shitty part of it.
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Came from using Sync for probably close to a decade on Reddit, so I’m definitely a creature of habit switching back for it on Lemmy. That being said, I tried ALL the apps looking for a solid experience and nothing delivers like Sync (opinion). All of them were missing something that completed my experience, was that experience coloured by my time with Sync on Reddit, sure. For all the options Sync gives me I’m willing to pay the dev half the cost of a steak dinner. I’ve already spent 100x longer on Sync for Lemmy than it would take me to eat said steak.
As for FOSS, let’s just say it’s not the be all / end all. Look at all the options that Sync brought to the table in a month that Lemmy hasn’t added in the whole of its development.
Personally I feel like most of the folks complaining about Ads in Sync are just complaining to complain. The FOSS crowd is also the most likely to use ad blocking, filtered dns providers, pi-hole, adguard etc and if that’s the case they won’t even see a single Ad.
Just gonna leave this here…
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
As I understand it Sync could charge for the app with a free software license, but wouldn’t be able to stop people copying or distributing it.
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Yeah loads of people pirate sync lol
I was excited to try Sync after all the hype (read: advertising) on Lemmy, saw that it had ads, and noped the fuck out.
You do you, but I’m not gonna use that kind of garbage. Ads don’t “keep apps accessible”. Instead, they poison your mind specifically and suck balls in general. The entire advertisement model is flawed, and certain kinds of people only put up with it because they don’t know better.
Yup. I think apps should cost money. No ads. It’s the freemium model that creates all the bad things about our experience.
Exactly. I have no problem with people trying to make money from software, but FOSS tools should be supported over proprietary ones wherever possible, and it’s nobodies fault that FOSS is often the better technical choice anyway. As someone with ADHD: fuck all ads, I demand a peaceful mind.
Nah. It’s the ads and the steep cost to remove them that make it a bad choice.
Edit: here’s another way to put it: Lemmy is an open-source platform run on independent instances. Your instance could use that $20 way more than Sync needs it.
DNS blockers gets rid of them. But honestly $20 is not steep for something you will use every day.
It’s steep compared to the other options that just don’t have them and offer largely the same experience. I keep hearing that Sync is miles ahead of other apps. It just isn’t.
A good app? Yes. $20 ahead of other apps that just don’t have ads? No.
I edited my above comment to reflect another point, that if all these people are happy to pay $20 to remove ads from Sync, hopefully they’re paying their instances to actually keep Lemmy running.
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It is though, it’s miles better than any free alternative I’ve tried. I couldn’t even stand to use lemmy until sync was released because of just how bad the free alternatives were. Sync for Lemmy just works and the UX is the best available that is also highly customizable. The Sync dev is one guy who has bills to pay, he always interacts and listens to feedback and is constantly updating the app. It was the same when it was a Reddit app and it was worth paying for then as well. Why is it so hard to fathom that some people deserve to be paid for their hard work?
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Clearly you haven’t even used it. It’s not like the other apps at all.
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It’s not hard to fathom – but that’s not the issue. The dev decided to make an ad-supported app in an ocean of free, no-ad apps. In the views of some folks, the ads and the cost to remove them are too much. Some say it’s worth it; some say it isn’t. That’s the beauty of free choice.
The dev could have opted to take donations if they wanted to try to recoup development costs. Frankly, they could have read the room and noted that there’s a limited market. Given that there are numerous other options available (many of which are free and open source by choice), it’s a hard sell to say one dev should independently be paid simply because they chose to be regardless of the market condition. This isn’t a moral or ethical issue – it’s someone arbitrarily throwing a number out for payment for an app that runs on a free and open source platform.
The Sync dev is one guy who has bills to pay, he always interacts and listens to feedback and is constantly updating the app.
This describes the situation with most of the other devs working on the alternative apps. They’ve been extremely quick with fixes and improvements. Again, no ads in those. Sync is not the standout you seem to think it is.
Why is it so hard to fathom that some people deserve to be paid for their hard work?
If anyone should be paying for anything on Lemmy, it’s for the hosting of Lemmy itself. Sync can’t load anything but its ads without that. I certainly hope people follow this logic when asked to pay for their bandwidth, which is the only place it seems to actually apply.
But hey, to each their own – if people want to pay $20 to cut the ads on one specific app, they should absolutely do that. Don’t frame it as anything other than that though; it’s simply disingenuous.
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I use Infinity for Lemmy you wanna use something else good for I’ve used sync myself it’s good, it’s in beta and it has a couple of ads if you want them gone pay or if your that desperate then pirate or use luckypatcher it’s not that hard but honestly your better off just using a different client if you don’t wanna pay there is like a good 7 options now at this point and I hope these posts go away soon let people use what they fancy and stop terrorising them or ridiculing then (note = intended for idiots who think criticizing people for the Lemmy client they use is a constructive use of their time not the OP who appears to be sane 🤣)
On the same day it released on mobilism lol
Don’t forget this is a community built around Open Source software with many refugees who came because proprietary apps were forced on them.
The Lemmy protocol is open source and you’re free to use an open source solution. You’re free to use sync for Lemmy in much the same way you can run a Spotify client in Linux. One does not destroy the other.
Tldr if you don’t like it, don’t use it.
but shouldn’t I go online and complain about it loudly?
How will anyone know I exist if they can’t hear (or read) my bitching?!?
Yeah, but only if you agree with the other people who are complaining loudly, otherwise it’s hardly worth the time.
Yeah yeah, but OP made a post about it so I thought I’d add some of the reasoning behind people being that way. I don’t care what app people use as long as I can use the one I like.
literally no one is forgetting about that - And the great thing about Lemmy is that no one will ever be forced to use an app they don’t want to use, whether it be closed source or open source.
What OP is (rightly) complaining about, is the huge amount of holier-than-thou rhetoric that’s plastered all over the front page of Lemmy right now giving users shit for wanting to use a closed source app.
I love FOSS, I’m typing this comment on a linux desktop right this moment (arch, btw) - but sometimes the best tool for a job (by my own completely subjective opinion) is a closed source tool. Using a closed source app to access an open source system isn’t a betrayal of that open source system.
If you personally don’t want to use a closed source solution, or if you specifically think that Sync is a bad solution for any number of possible reasons, then you’re free to continue using open source solutions, I really don’t see why so many people care so much about what apps other people are using, Sync existing doesn’t take anything away from open source solutions (except maybe users, but again - you can’t force people to use your software)
the huge amount of holier-than-thou rhetoric that’s plastered all over the front page of Lemmy right now
All I’m seeing in the all frontpage is people glorifying Sync while belittling other apps and complaining about those complainers, Like dude, I have the sync community blocked because while I like that it exists, I don’t want to be force feed with that content, and now I still am because it’s being discussed in other communities.
What’s annoying is the way some people talk about the app, stating that it’s the objective best app ever, like zealots. I don’t give two flying fucks about the price but I swear that the alleged complaints of FOSS users may be in part because of the attitude of other users.
Please link me a single post other than this one that glorifies sync while belittling FOSS apps (not that this one belittles Foss apps in the slightest) - preferably with more than a dozen upvotes
Because I posted a screenshot in this thread with five of the top 10 posts on my front page being the exact opposite, and I really don’t believe you when you say that you’re being spammed with “sync zealots”
People like Sync, but it’s the haters that are being spammy and obnoxious about it, not it’s users
There are FOSS alternatives available. I personally use Jerboa daily.
Yeah I’m aware of the alternatives but I thought it could do with some rationale as to why people aren’t overly impressed with Sync as they were on Reddit. Nothing against the app tbh, happy with the one I have.
This is not a proprietary app (in the first party terms, it’s still a 3rd party app)
- Yes Okay I get it, yes it’s proprietary, but I’m saying everyone was gleefully using proprietary 3rd party apps on Reddit, Apollo was proprietary, RIF was proprietary, proprietary was not forced on anyone. 1st party apps were forced on us all.
- This is literally one of the apps Reddit killed off
- It’s literally not being forced on anyone
I think the comment you’re replying to is not talking about late Reddit refugees but early FOSS enthusiast that were on Lemmy before. You’re missing the point.
But it is proprietary. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proprietary_software
I really like the UX of infinity, it’s almost as good as sync.
Infinity from Docile Alligator was a really nice client 🥲 I easily prefer it over Sync.
I’ll wait for the fork to be available in the PlayStore and try it out. Would be nice to have DA working on it again though, but as I understood it he’s not using Lemmy himself and is actively searching for a full-time job
The !infinityforlemmy@lemdro.id fork is coming along pretty nicely. I love how many options there are. I keep switching between them (currently using Connect).
