Then buy the ad free version or don’t use it. The initial comment here is FUD.
If you’re worried about feeding the advertisers, then buying software is the best course of action. All software development takes time, and time is money. Sometimes, developers will give away their time for free, but demanding that someone do that is completely unreasonable.
These are the kind of comments that make me want to stop writing FOSS. It’s more entitled than the people who come into my Discord and demand I answer their questions that are already answered in the readme.
If people feel entitled to my work, I don’t want to work for them. Why do you think so much software includes ads? Because people expect to receive software for free. I’ve been maintaining several FOSS projects for over a decade and most people are very gracious, but some people assume everything should be FOSS and every FOSS developer should provide free support.
Did you know that you have to pay to list an app in both the App Store and the Play Store? Someone pays those costs, even when the app is free as in beer and free as in speech.
And as far as FOSS and ads go, some of the biggest FOSS projects in the world make a significant amount of their funding through advertising. I hate to break it to you, but the FOSS ecosystem is mostly funded through advertising, directly and indirectly.
That’s not all people are being told. Also, I haven’t written a Lemmy client. (Although I have written an ActivityPub server. What a mess of a protocol.)
Lol what? I feel like you’re not even talking to me at this point. Yeah, I definitely don’t align with my fellow free software devs, huh?
I think it is unreasonable to diss an app because the free version has ads. Especially when the paid version is $4.
There is no ideal society where all software is FOSS, because solely writing FOSS doesn’t put food on the table. What you’re talking about is communism, which I’m not entirely against, but I don’t think it’s very likely.
One of my libraries is used in about 4,000 projects, and even though I’ve spent literally hundreds of hours working on it, I’ve never received a dime for it. I wish I could spend all day writing code for free for everyone, but I would starve to death if I did.
The infrastructure you’re talking about (which I’m assuming is things like the Linux kernel), is developed by companies that make money through ads. I’m sorry to say my guy, but advertising is what pays the bills.
And no, just because I make something FOSS doesn’t mean you’re entitled to my continuing work. First of all, it’s still my IP. I own the copyrights, as well as any trademarks. And second, when it breaks or needs to be updated or you need help with it, that’s still work that someone has to do. These software projects take actual time to create, maintain, and support. I’m assuming you’re not a FOSS dev or this would be pretty apparent to you, as well as how FOSS is actually funded (or not).