blunderworld @ blunderworld @lemmy.ca

Posts

7

Comments

302

Joined

2 yr. ago

Interesting, I didn't know that; thanks for the info.

Ill admit im not very familiar with blender, linux, or redhat, so ill look into those -- thank you.

My understanding is that nobody owns lemmy, rather people own the instances that make up lemmy. Which is definitely in the spirit of FOSS, but based on my understanding (happy to be proven wrong) I dont think its accurate to say the creators of Lemmy are making a living from it. You can donate to the admins of the instances you use, I suppose.

Likewise, isn't the main source of income for Wikipedia donations? They ask me for one every time I'm on the site.

So other than semantics, what's really the difference in making a donation to a service like Wikipedia, and paying for Sync? You can think of paying to remove ads as a donation if that helps, but the fact remains that lemmy is already available for free, and is much smaller than organizations like Wikipedia or Linux. Dude has got to eat.

So the best solution to make a living as a FOSS developer is to... Work for some giant tech monopoly who engages in sketchy consumer practices on a regular basis?

AFAIK Sync was created by a single person, so I doubt he's getting paid by anyone other than fans of the app and ad revenue. I'll look into RedHat though, I appreciate you taking the time to provide an actual example.

So in other words, you're making a blanket statement without any contextually relevant examples to support it. Almost like youre just fear mongering and don't have an actual argument. Got it.

Like who? Making an actual living I mean, not just collecting small donations to 'buy them a coffee' or whatever.

Not saying you're wrong, but some examples would be welcome.

Edit: Down voting me for asking a question, lol. Way to demonstrate your dedication to that free and open philosophy you apparently advocate for, folks.

AFAIK the way ad revenue works is dependent on trackers. Paying to remove ads on Sync also removes all trackers according to many people who have tested it; still seems to come down to not wanting to pay the developer.

Which is fine, of course. I just think framing the app as sketchy or something is completely misguided.

I won't pretend to be an expert on ad revenue. But couldn't one explanation for the Sync for Reddit vs. Lemmy pricing be that reddit had far more users, translating to more ad revenue from the free version, allowing the developer to justify a cheaper price for the paid version?

As far as the $20 for ad removal goes, I haven't seen any compelling arguments that it doesnt remove trackers. Ive seen several people posting proof that it does remove trackers, along with the tool and method they used to check. As for the subscription service, it includes a lot of really nice features beyond removing ads; I think its aimed at enthusiasts and power users.

I find the idea that ljdawson is just trying to capitalize on a trend in order to make a quick buck to be ridiculous. The app is already too polished for that. Sync already offers a far better experience than any alternatives IMO, and its still only in beta.

Well then what's the issue? Because every complaint I've seen so far has been about the optional monetary facet.

The F in FOSS stands for free, IIRC. The ability to access, use, share the code, etc. has more to do with the open source part of the acronym. I haven't really seen anyone complain about Sync being closed sourced so far... Just that you have to pay not to see ads.

Ive only ever seen FOSS developers get support through donations. Which is nice and all, but likely not enough for an independent developer like ljdawson to survive on alone.

Dont get me wrong, I like FOSS apps too, but the experience almost always suffers to some degree; its easy to see why. I just don't get why Sync is being singled out like some kind of evil tech monopoly lately. As far as I can tell, its just an individual developer who released a great app for free (yes with ads, you're the product, blah blah blah) with an optional lifetime payment to disable ads completely.

Yeah, because why should app developers get paid, right? They should all code for free at their local public library. Maybe live in a big ceramic jar like Diogenes.

I wouldn't call it a fiasco. App works perfectly fine in the free version. You can pay if you want to support the creator and gets some extra perks.

I use the Ground News app. It pulls news from hundreds of sources, and provides multiple news outlets to choose from for each story. You can customize your feed based on your country, topics that interest you, and so on. Its sources also provide useful information to help you choose; for example, Ground News accounts for things like bias across the political spectrum.

Its also a great way to discover news outlets you trust, and you can always just go directly to your favorite news providers' website once you get a feel for what's out there.

Good riddance. We dont need these apps, no matter how much they try to convince us we do. There are other sources for news in Canada already, and others will no doubt appear to fill this gap left by Meta. The less our country has to do with sketchy companies like them, the better off we are in my opinion.

Not really into tv adaptations of video games. However, if they give this series the same high-quality anime treatment as Castlevania, sign me up.

I'm sure there will be crazier answers, but one memory comes to mind. I'm walking down a busy street late one night in Montreal. I see this preppy looking guy lliterally screaming in the face of a bouncer outside of a club, like about to burst a blood vessel. Anyway, this guy is asking dumb questions like "dont you know who my dad is?" And yelling about how he's going to get this dad on the phone to ruin the bouncers career for not letting him into the club.

Maybe I'm lucky, but I don't see cartoonishly entitled behavior like that often, so it stuck out to me. To the bouncer's credit he kept his cool and just gave the other guy a blank stare the whole interaction...total pro.

I get where you're coming from, but seeing posts like this for so many popular new topics is getting repetitive too. Its definitely tech related. Elon and twitter news will slow down eventually, and people will obsess over something new, guaranteed. Better to just ride it out IMO.

Sounds like an Elden Ring boss

Because its a female moose so saving it would save more lives? What, should we tell the bears to only eat male moose from now on?

If you have a point maybe just make it next time instead of being so cryptic.

I did read the article, and didnt really present any argument to be refuted...what do you mean?

Ongoing? Please explain. My own country (Canada) is sadly guilty of committing what is tantamount to indigenous genocide in the past through residential schools. But I haven't heard of anything so serious happening currently.