I keep trying to work people through this but lemmy is filled with contrarians who see people getting excited and want a reason to be angry.
There is nothing in boost that any other app with admod lacks. Getting ad free means none of this is active. It's said every time this stuff it posted but people don't bother to read passed the angry stuff.
I got down voted the other day stating that just paying for the app would disable all that. Devs need to make money too. It's either ads and tracking or pay some how.
Outside of a few amazing people out there who do this just for fun, most people would like some kind of return on investment.
There are free pc games as well, and paid ones. Free movies, and paid ones. Heck you can probably get a car for free, but most people prefer to pay for one. You can use the free apps all you want.
I worked my way through just about every Reddit client available for Android and Boost was the only one that wasn't super annoying. I'm happy to support development of an app that I use every day, especially if it wouldn't be available at all otherwise.
No, we see it - it's just dumb. Having a free as in freedom and beer set of clients is great for lemmy - but also having market driven clients available is healthy for catering to individual preferences. Boost existing isn't your problem - clients that you like exist and please go enjoy them. I'm not certain why you're lurking here, is it just out of masochism? The person you're replying to at least put out helpful information about the application.
More choice is a good thing and four dollars for an app forever is extremely reasonable.
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.
You used to be able to buy lifetime licenses via the Romanian publisher directly. I bought all of mine (like 12 devices worth on a couple of family plans) 5-7 years ago so I haven't checked recently but it's probably still worth a look. I've had good luck sticking my VPN endpoint in Romania (or Ukraine pre war) and just paying for stuff with PayPal.
Was about to say, wasn't there some requirement about Boost basically getting access to everything on your phone? I didn't read much into the details, just saw some complaint about it the other day, thought "yikes" and moved on. After then it's been a bit weird to see all the cheer for Boost.
Did you read the comments? The dev himself addressed the concerns, to the point where the OP updated his post (emphasis is mine)
Edit to say this blew up. I didn't realise I was kicking as big a hornet's nest and haven't read all the comments yet.
To be clear, what I don't like about this and other provisions in the terms is the language and implications around data use. I've no problem with ads being shown - I want developers to get paid for the work they do and that makes it possible for users to have "free" access to software if they can't afford to purchase.
I also want to add the response from Boost's dev below to make sure it's visible. You'll see that it is boilerplate but required by Google and was present in Boost for reddit. I just hadn't seen it because I purchased it immediately based on a recommendation. It doesn't make me happy about it but does remove some doubts I was having about the direction Boost is heading.
I didn’t read much into the details, just saw some complaint about it the other day, thought “yikes” and moved on.
This part
I also want to add the response from Boost’s dev below to make sure it’s visible. You’ll see that it is boilerplate but required by Google and was present in Boost for reddit. I just hadn’t seen it because I purchased it immediately based on a recommendation. It doesn’t make me happy about it but does remove some doubts I was having about the direction Boost is heading.
Does paint a different picture though. Thank you. :)