[izzydata]

Simple. You get rid of the free with ads version and then sell the software for whatever amount of money. Or if there has to be a free version it wouldn't have ads. It would just not have the pro features which you would have to pay for.

Ads are not a necessary business model.

[d0gbread]

I understand that is an option, but the way you say he's profiting off free content made it sound like it should be someone's choice other than the developers to dictate how he should or shouldn't monetize. But given your response now I'm thinking you mean you just wouldn't pick it.

The fact many people would, that Lemmy isn't affected one way or another, etc, makes it seem more like preference than morals or something. Just getting a lay of the land of the hate Sync is getting (on Lemmy, too).

It comes across as "we don't profit [like that/at all] so you shouldn't either". But as someone that doesn't see it as unethical, I just see user choice, and in this one case a paid plan subsidized by users that don't mind the ads.

[izzydata]

Who said anything about not profiting? Of course people are free to choose to do bad things and there is nothing we can do to stop them. That doesn't mean they deserve praise or shouldn't be called out on it.

It is shameful in my personal opinion which is why I am expressing it.

[d0gbread]

Hm, okay. I appreciate the dialog, just trying to understand the perspective and I think I do (still disagree, but that's okay).

I thought maybe you'd go in the direction of laws or licenses being used to prohibit advertising in certain contexts, like downstream use of content, but what I'm hearing is that profiting off other's free content is fine, but in your opinion doing so with ads just isn't cool with you. That's reasonable, I just thought maybe your desired solution was more systemic.

Ultimately he's trying to cover his own salary. Would be interesting to know what that salary is, and what the price point would have to be to eliminate the ad revenue completely. As it stands, many balked at a one time cost of $20.

[mdaniel]

> As it stands, many balked at a one time cost of $20

For clarity, it's not a one time cost, it's a subscription cost, so $17 per year is what it shows inside my copy. I grant there is also a $99 "lifetime" option that is a one time payment, but my experience has been that "lifetime" means the lifetime of the business, not my lifetime

I don't meant to take any issue with the rest of the comments about needing to put food on their table, just that some folks in the syncforlemmy community itself even were complaining about the ongoing payment being harder to swallow that just paying for the app once like how most in-app purchases work for a situation like this

[d0gbread]

There are two options: a one time cost to remove ads ($20), or Sync Ultra which is recurring.