Paid apps: no problem. If it’s good, I’ll pay.
Subscription: maybe, if it’s worth it.
Ads: F-Droid can fuck right off. If they do that, they’d be a miserable bunch of sellouts.
Yeah, as long as the payment method is FOSS, secure, and works as intended, I have no serious issue with pay-once software being introduced. There are apps from F-Droid I would pay a few dollars to use if required, and I’d be happy if it meant more and higher-quality software.
I feel like the freemium model they mention with subscriptions is just begging for F-Droid to be enshittified. F-Droid would really, really need to prove themselves with pay-once applications first for my liking before moving onto something so much more drastic.
And then ads are just a non-starter. Ads only exist to be psychologically manipulative, they’re obnoxious as fuck in the present day, they’re a privacy nightmare, and they’re a vector for malware. I would see it as a betrayal of what F-Droid does for me, and I would actively see F-Droid as being sellouts who are only marginally better than using Aurora at that point.
If they were talking about Privacy-Preserving Attribution like Firefox is experimenting with supporting on MDN, that would be one thing, but it doesn’t sound like that’s what F-Droid is talking about.
Not only are privacy and data protection founding principles for both Mobifree and F-Droid, the use of tracking-based in-app advertising poses a moral dilemma as well. If someone wants to gain access to an app, but does not have the financial means to purchase it, they can use it at a different kind of price - their user data.
F-Droid is also considering ads that contain no tracking, which removes that moral dillema, IMO:
It should be mentioned that it is possible to include in-app advertising without user tracking. However the lead conversion ratio drops dramatically, so the efficacy of this approach is not nearly as high.
That’s basically what PPA is, advertising without tracking. If advertisers want to pay for it, then great.
Edit: Downvoting without responding like
F-Droid is also considering ads that contain no tracking, which removes that moral dillema, IMO:
You assume everybody is okay with ads.
I’m not. My brainspace has been highjacked since I was a little kid by stupid advertisers. To this day, I remember ads for products that have disappeared decades ago and that I never gave a shit about at any point in my life.
Why are advertisers allowed to force their shit into my head?
I hate ads. I’m utterly intolerant of advertising. I hate the tracking and the malware that come with ads, but I hate ads even more. There are no moral ads. The advertisement industry is a despicable leech that needs to die.
If F-Droid springs this shit on me, I swear to god I’m gonna start having murderous thoughts…
pretty sure the venn diagram of f-droid users and adblocking users is such a huge overlap that this may not pay off too well.
I might uninstall F-droid today…
What the fuck? Did F-Droid change ownership (sell out to a hedge fund or something)? Or did I somehow time-travel to April 1, or what?
Well, some members of F-Droid’s central board resigned nearly a year ago, citing issues that had been ongoing for a long time prior. Statement posted to Gitlab.
I’ve been slowly moving my app installations over to Obtainium ever since, and have been using NeoStore for the remaining F-Droid/Izzy installations.
No thank you. This is a slippery slope.
Damn, never thought I’d live to see the enshittification of F-Droid. I definitely won’t be using it anymore if this happens.
Targeted advertising is a huge no. No more of that.
Static advertising I can accept, but then who’s responsible for vetting ads? I don’t want scams displayed everywhere.
Devs definitely need ways to support themselves and sustain development. I’ve shared this screenshot from the app Secure Tether before:
I like to chip in a few bucks to my most used apps/services that are donationware, but after all the middlemen take their cut, the devs are left with peanuts. This IMO is the biggest hurdle when it comes to online monetization. A less expensive way to donate will certainly help.
Additionally, there are people who cannot or will not pay for apps, and I don’t want to exclude them from being able to use an app/service they need.
Monetization like how Reddit Gold was and how Discord Nitro is are some of my favorites. Few extra perks and cosmetic features for paying users. Free users are still able to use the main product at no cost and you can gift them Gold/Nitro if they aren’t able to purchase it themselves. I don’t know how that would translate into an app store model though.
I guess most won’t bother to read the full post and will instead react negatively to the title. Having read the entire thing I am fine with it and would be happy to see more direct competition for the Play Store. The ad thing is only a problem if the store doesn’t include a filter to easily hide ad-supported apps.
I guess most won’t bother to read the full post and will instead react negatively to the title.
Exactly, it talks about ads in one paragraph of a very long post, and it’s mostly to talk about all the problems that an ad revenue model has for FOSS!
Honestly people need to RTFArticle. It’s talking about the result of interviews with developers on how they would prefer to be compensated, not definitive plans for what is or is not going to be allowed in F-Droid in the future.
It’s always about Ads…
Oh, they start off as unobtrusive; maybe a little banner that shows when the app is opening, or a written mention with a link.
But, this doesn’t generate much revenue. Next the banner persists, and suddenly a video plays. Just one, just once.
Eventually you open the app to pop up banners and autoplay videos, and wonder where the app is. Every line you cross with adverts makes the next line easier to cross.
After reading that post, this sounds mostly like a whole lot of tracking. At that point I think I’ll just use the Play Store lol, it has more selection if I’m going to have the same level of privacy anyway
Everyone here is bummed out, but fails to see the upside.
To rival the Play Store, there needs to be an alternative package manager on Android which hosts proprietary apps.
The outcome is a decrease in Googles revenue and eases the hold they have on Android as a Play Store dependant operating system.
If F-Droid didn’t step up, Epic would be the only contender to the Play Store. At least this way we know there will be some degree of democracy.
I don’t even read this as allowing proprietary apps. They are investigating allowing different monetarisation methods for open source apps and building open source tooling to help with that.
If it is a pay what you want model I am all for it. This would be similar to how elementary OS st
The problem with a fixed price is you have to always calibrate it according to the economy of the user’s geolocation. What is cheap for a person from a developed world may be unaffordable for a third world county.
I can’t see this go well for them.
I get the idea. I also get not wanting to restrict devs and hence offering all kinds of payment options. But I cannot see this be visible for them given their target audience.
I never expected this. What a shame.
Edit: the ads part are not an acceptable add-on for me, as someone who respects privacy and foss. I don’t know of a single foss payment processor (lmk if one exists). A lot of people here are saying “pay what you want”, but it’s that way now, with GitHub donation links; we don’t need this in the fdroid app.
If they become the Play store, why wouldn’t I just use the Play store?
You value Foss software which does not track?
Advertisment part not withstanding
