Sure but the same could be said and often is said for open source projects.
Open source devs often have a particular goal or vision in mind and will ignore any attempts to give the users what they actually want, either through issues or pull requests.
We’ve seen it so many times in open source projects, they love having that power over others and become mini dictators.
That’s a really weird way of framing a hobbyist who isn’t being paid using their free time to code what they feel like coding. It seems to me that people who show up and make demands about what someone else does are literally attempting to dictate how that person spends their time. Someone coding what they want, rather than coding what other people want them to code, is just… independent? Autonomous? Do you really think that someone spending their free time how they want to constitutes being a ‘mini dictator’?
It sounds to me like some end users like to have power over others and feel entitled to dictate how those who make the things they use spend their time.
Personally, my suggestion to people with that attitude would be that they learn to make what they want themselves rather than demanding that others do it.
With open source, you can fork the project.
It should be okay for an open source maintainer to say “no”.
Yes-ish, but some open source devs take it way too far and act against the interests of their userbase because they want to force users into particular behaviours even if the users have been up until that point happy with the way things worked.
There needs to be a way of tlking about this shitty behaviour without being told “just fork it” or “devs can just say no”. They bring too much of the bad parts of society into their work and act shittily and we are supposed to just accept that? There should be a way for non coders to usurp devs who do shit like that.
Also, no, we can’t fork it. We have no coding skills, we have tried but it just doesn’t work for us. “Just fork it” isn’t a valid response to bringing up legit problems with developers ioo.
Plus if something has been ignored for so long that it basically needs a full rewrite of some aspect then even if you have the skills to do it, you can’t realistically do it because it’s such a big problem.
The point, in one sentence:
If you are the product, not the paying customer, then not only is there no incentive to cater to your needs, there exists incentive to make the product worse for you if it means the paying customer extracts more from you.
Users of freemium software are basically nothing more than willing cattle. Housed and fed for free only to be slaughtered.
Maybe people just can’t help themselves? I fear we can’t have a fair and free market if people are so easily manipulated.
I fear we can’t have a fair and free market if people are so easily manipulated.
We can’t, certainly at least in the US. People falsely believe the government will protect them from exploitation by corporations, but corporations have long since proven they can and will manipulate the government into serving them.
This is also true for open source software though, a lot of open source devs are mini dictators ruling over their own fiefdoms with an iron fist and they don’t care what the users, many of which have no coding ability, need or want.
Even those that do have some coding ability will be ignored if they try to change things upstream that the main devs don’t agree with, even if most users would welcome such a change.
Yep. If it uses a cloud service, they’re probably going to squeeze you, pull a bait-and-switch, or go out of business. The only exceptions that spring to mind are services with significant monetization in the corporate space, like Dropbox. And I’m not really confident that Dropbox’s free tier will remain viable for long, either.
Even non-cloud-based apps are risky nowadays because apps don’t remain compatible with mobile OSes for very long. They require more frequent updates than freeware/shareware generally did back in the 90s. I remember some freeware apps that I used for 10 years straight, across several major OS versions, starting in the 90s. That just doesn’t happen anymore. I’ve been using Android for over 10 years and I don’t think there’s a single app I used back then that would still work.
Single-purchase apps are basically dead, at least on mobile platforms. Closed-source freeware is dead, too. If it’s open-source, if push comes to shove someone can always pick up the torch and update it. It’s very rare for an open-source project to be completely abandoned without there at least being a viable open-source alternative available.
At this point, I don’t even look at Google Play. It’s F-Droid or bust.
Excellent article. That’s why I use OSS first and foremost as they don’t have the incentive to bring in € instead they are more focused on a quality product.
Well written! I’ve had a similar experience with a habit tracking app. I’ve once stopped using it and after getting back to it after a year or so, it was so much worse with so many new pay walled limitations. An open source habit tracker on the other hand stayed the same for years and was even improved further. If you’re inrerested: Loop Habit Tracker https://f-droid.org/packages/org.isoron.uhabits/
Loop is great! I love F-Droid. Many times it’s guaranteed you’ll find a better alternative to a proprietary, ad-filled app on Play Store, on the F-Droid app
