this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2023
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Not really. The alternative is charging for the app in the first place, but if you do that your app fails. You include ads to help pay for development and ongoing expenses.
Offering a subscription to remove them for those that want to is secondary to that. Very few people actually subscribe to anything at all unless they absolutely have to. You'd be surprised to learn how few users actually pay to remove ads--like oftentimes less than one percent
That's not the only alternative.
Do bless me with your knowledge, then. Donations don't work. You don't want ads. You don't want subscription fees. People hate paying for apps.
There is no other option other than working for free.
Donations work. The dev clearly has many loyal fans willing to pay. Look at Jerboa/Lemmy's donation pages. It's good money.
Besides this I'm not even saying the dev shouldn't do it. I'm just explaining that I don't like it.
I gladly donate to FOSS software devs because the product never forces me to log in for a feature or get a key or see an ad. The app doesn't get any of the bloat required to do that stuff either. I just don't want to use Sync and it's not because I'm cheap
The Lemmy dev is making around 30k a year. Subtract taxes from that and he's making maybe 25k (at best).
They're very clearly extremely talented software engineers, and you're telling me $12 an hour is "good money"? That's not even above minimum wage in many US states! Do you have any idea how much software engineers make?
Doesn't have to be the only thing you do. Where do you think FOSS software comes from?
People working for free, very rarely company sponsorship, or businesses making open source software.