this post was submitted on 02 Aug 2023
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So I'm not an app developer, so I might be completely off base, but I don't really understand a lot of the arguments against this.
Firstly, there's an ad free one time cost that in my opinion seems very fair. Secondly, as I'm looking through the feature for Ultra, most of the features seem to be things that require an external server. I'm not sure how push notifications work so I can't comment on it, but syncing settings across devices for example doesn't happen at the instance level. That kind of thing could only be done through a server owned by the dev. However, it is very likely that the dev doesn't own a server, and is instead renting on a VPS, which is a subscription for them. So in order to provide these particular services, the dev has to pay a subscription. So would it not make sense that those that enjoy the benefits of this subscription the dev pays, also have to pay a subscription? In my mind that simply seems fair, in order to support a dev that has clearly put a lot of time and effort into making a great app.
The user base for Lemmy is significantly smaller than Reddit. The dev needs a smaller number of people to be able to support the operating costs of the app (as well as the wellbeing of the dev) which means that necessarily a different (and steeper) pricing model would be necessary.
I do not think it's fair to claim that Lemmy API access is free and therefore there are no operating costs, because there's more to the app than API calls. It is indeed correct that API access is free, which seems to me to be the precise reason why there exists a free version of the app that you don't have to pay for in the first place. All API calls within the app are free. There are no paywalled Lemmy API calls, at least from what I can tell. But again if I'm wrong I'll admit it if someone can inform me.
I think you're spot on and it applies in general to why we see a trend of subscriptions. When we all got our first smartphones, most apps were local and it didn't cost the developer more if they had 1M downloads compared to if they had 50 downloads.
The thing is as always comparing. For that price there are things out there that had much bigger development and costs and offer better stuff, plus he had recouped most of the costs already when it was for reddit, yes there was new development of course but it wasn't a new app. Apart from that this is not a service with big recurring expenses, the only exception is the cloud functionality and let's be honest that also probably is cheap considering the size of the backups.
In any case I believe that the solution is as simple as not using it if people are not interested.
If the dev was fair, he would split the revenues of all the models with the instances to keep them alive. The free API call doesn't matter if the instances close.