F-Droid exploring to include paid apps, in-apps, subscription, and ads in app

Blaze@lemmy.zip to Android@lemdro.id – 191 points –
A streamlined and sustainable app deployment approach with Mobifree | F-Droid - Free and Open Source Android App Repository
f-droid.org

cross-posted from: https://r.nf/post/1771956

Thoughts?

122

You are viewing a single comment

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.

There are no FOSS payment methods. In fact, you're probably lucky to find a payment processor that will handle FOSS stuff at all.

Love it or hate it, Bitcoin is an open source payment method.

Well the problem with ads is people don’t want to pay for stuff period. And things cost money so here we are in our current state with ads being used to pay for everything online.