I am a heavy user of f-droid and avoid these 'Simple' apps. The high level of nag is not just annoying but borders on begging. Having pro versions where you can change colors defeats the idea of open source. I hate bringing the negative energy, but there is a treasure of apps available with f-droid other than these. I am glad they have their own website and wish they just went and did their own thing there.
For what it's worth, when I modified the dialer app to add a feature the developer didn't want, I discovered that there is a nag built into every screen that triggers randomly for "unofficial" versions: https://github.com/SimpleMobileTools/Simple-Commons/blob/5ad...
The problem is marketing it as if it will be free and ad free, then restricting its capability based on price while notifying users to upgrade. It's a bait and switch.
> Do you have any other ways the developer can make a living?
Yes. Sell commercial software or If the developer cares about open source then charge for support. Its a disservice IMO to make the user install for free and then ask them money to use other features wasting users time. There is a incentive to make worst product in the free version which goes against the principle of opensource.
Same here. As a result, the vast majority of my programming effort goes into my day job, and my OSS projects are critically understaffed.
Which works okay for me and my projects, but if I wanted them to be serious players in the market rather than just side projects, I would need to find a way to earn money in a way which doesn't eat most of my time.
Personally, I want FOSS software to be able to be serious players in the market. Therefore, I want them to have enough developer resources to make that possible. Therefore, they need to make money.
> Personally, I want FOSS software to be able to be serious players in the market. Therefore, I want them to have enough developer resources to make that possible. Therefore, they need to make money.
I agree. I do not see anything wrong with earning money from open source software, lots of companies do it. Open source is always good for transparency than proprietary closed software. We should support open source devs to be successful, as you said, to go against proprietary monopolies.
I agree, you don't owe me anything. You don't have to share your code for free.
My point is that if you want to make money for your code, either get a job writing software or create a business around the software you wrote.
I think open source should be created by people not trying to make money from it. I understand that not everyone feels this way, and I sometimes agree with the arguments. However, my overall feeling is that supporting open source work should come in the form of companies supporting their employees to work on open source work that is valuable for the company employing those people. They contribute to open source not because they are trying to make money from that work, but because they use that software to support their main money making work, and get more value by sharing the work than keeping it fully internal.
And so your software will be poisoned by value extraction from the user, which will be inferior to software from someone not wanting to make money, which I'll use instead. :D
I do understand OS.
Read the preamble of gpl this explains the _purpose_ of os.
The _goal_ of open source is to provide free software. Software that is free to _use_ now, and in the future, not _just_ free to get the source, free to use.
If you don't provide free software (and free build processes) it's not compliant with Open Source licences.
Paid binaries are permitted but you must be _willing_ to to give away your software free of cost.
Aguably nagware is a deliberate annoyance and time cost to the user that makes it not "free to use". Adding crippleware (making it not work after a period of time) is certainly forbidden.
If your are writing nagware with oss license no-one will take you to court, because they can fix it, but it's certainly deceptive. It imies you don't want your software to be free to use.
OS licenses were not designed as a marketing tool for individual developers to get you a foot in the door. You can do that, but don't be surprised if you get called out for it. That is not the _purpose_ of OS.
That's the purpose of a free tier.
As a RedHat customer I don't find any of the software use daily to be suffering from nagware.
If grep had nagware in it, I'd bitch about it on HN.
> The _goal_ of open source is to provide free software. Software that is free to _use_ now, and in the future, not _just_ free to get the source, free to use. If you don't provide free software (and free build processes) it's not compliant with Open Source licences
No, the goal of Open Source is to provide a user with ability access the source and do things to it. That's the difference between the Open Source and Free Software championed by FSF. FSF flopped. That's why we are still waiting for the Hurd to be useful.
Source: Sat in the room with Bruce Perens when this was happening.
Working on this suite of apps might be his day job. If he takes up a day job he might not be able to work on and maintain these many apps.
Can you develop and maintain a suite of 8-10 apps only on your free time? I was talking about how this specific developer who makes these many apps can make money, and not how you do.
> I hate bringing the negative energy, but there is a treasure of apps available with f-droid other than these.
That's the problem with OSS and F-droid in general. Tons of apps. Very few polished enough for use of general population.
Simple is great. Simple Gallery Pro blows away every single gallery app on the market. A few minor bugs that the author(s) keep addressing.
P.S. Developers of useful apps should be able not to live on Ramen. They should be able to eat whatever they want and buy a house. Screw the entitled crowd who say "Shit should be free, open source blah blah" without maintaining a polished product for a few years.
We are past that point. The old complaint used to be that Android users don't want to pay, so iOS got all the cool apps that cost $2-$10 and Android got ad-ridden 'free' apps.
Now everything is on a subscription basis, regardless of which OS you use. Even 'dumb' apps like music players and file managers, that don't require online access are being priced this way.
And Android apps still suck donkey balls as those who normally would pay for them say "Just use stuff form the F-droid. I kind of works, ignore non-polished interface"
User buys a $600.- phone and then complains about a $2.- app. It's not enough that the application is open source, it should also be completely free of charge!
"there must be a well-publicized means of obtaining the source code for no more than a reasonable _reproduction_ cost, preferably downloading via the Internet without charge"
The software itself MUST be free, and the _reproduction_ costs reasonable.
You cannot add clauses that make me pay money or restrict my use. It must be free as in beer to use and redistribute either modified or in its original form.
When you pay for a copy you don't buy rights to use the open source software, you already had them. You buy the paper it's printed on.
And you can't deliberately make it hard for me to compile either.
Arguably nagware is that.
If you own _all_ the rights you can also release a version for cash, but if you then tell people that you are selling them open source software, and you sell them a version for which the source code is not freely available you are breaking the law/rules.
The quote you have put there says nothing about binaries, only the source code. And indeed the source code has essentially no reproduction cost since it's downloadable via the Internet without charge as it's preferred.
>you sell them a version for which the source code is not freely available
But the source code IS freely available. All the nagware/restrictions/whatever is in there as a build option. Play Store builds have them enabled unless you buy a license, F-Droid & GitHub builds have them disabled.
In any case it seems you're mistaken about what free software exactly entails, and what is and is not allowed by GPL. For a TL;DR refer to the ones behind it.
>You are allowed to sell copies of the modified program commercially, but only under the terms of the GNU GPL. Thus, for instance, you must make the source code available to the users of the program as described in the GPL, and they must be allowed to redistribute and modify it as described in the GPL.
If you don't mind please list the f-droid apps you use regularly. I have been few apps for the past few months and the apps have small memory footprint and have great performance.
Notification Cron - This is a great way to use your phone for reminders and learn Quartz Cron.
SunTimes - This app will set alarms at certain sun/moon points in the day. So whatever time sunrise is at your location an alarm can go off. I like to use it to let me know when Golden Hour starts and the day is almost ending.
QuillNote - I love this note taking app, and have taken to posting thoughts there to lower the number of tweets/posts I send. I get the dopamine rush of typing out and saving my thought, and it all stays local.
Mindful Notifier - Whenever this bell goes off (and I set it random between 90 minutes and 120 minutes) I take three very deep breaths. The sayings are okay, but the healthy intake of oxygen is great.
SMS Scheduler - An older app, but a great way to send a text at a later time. My daughter has a different work schedule than I do, so I schedule texts to her for when work is done. Also, if someone asks me to remind them of something later, I schedule the text and it sends as a reminder.
Dodge - Simple game of getting across the screen. My record is 13.
Snotz - I like this for non-thoughts (Quillnote) but tend towards quillnote more. It's a note taking app with nice colors.
FOSS Browser - This is a nice simple browser for when I don't want to be tracked.
Nunti - Pretty good feed reader that supposedly uses AI to tell what stories to share. I'm still training it, but prefer it over online news aggregation.
Vector Pinball - I played this game longer than I should have.
1list - great shopping list app, or any other list you may need to make, and all stays local.
