[thepete2]

Cool. I suspect this model will mostly work, but only if the price of the app is low enough to not justify a lot of inconvenience by compiling it yourself or maybe getting it from f-droid. I like this model a lot, apps like OsmAnd do the same.

[ralmidani]

It’s tempting to think you can price GPL software at some “sweet spot” where customers think it’s worth it and you recoup your development costs. But then someone who hasn’t incurred your development costs can undercut you, even while offering the same or better service.

[heavyset_go]

At least with AGPL software, if this happens, it will force those competitors to release their secret sauce, too. Those competitors will have to open source all of their changes, meanwhile as the copyright holder, you're able to release proprietary modules or changes at any time, and those competitors are out of luck if they want to use them. Should they attempt to compete on feature parity, their additions will need to open source.

[jefftk]

In this case, we are talking about client side software. It runs locally on the device. This means that the distinction between the GPL and the AGPL is not really relevant. And any competitor preparing modified binaries would also need to release their source.