F-Droid exploring to include paid apps, in-apps, subscription, and ads in app

Paid apps: no problem. If it's good, I'll pay.

Subscription: maybe, if it's worth it.

Ads: F-Droid can fuck right off. If they do that, they'd be a miserable bunch of sellouts.

Yeah, as long as the payment method is FOSS, secure, and works as intended, I have no serious issue with pay-once software being introduced. There are apps from F-Droid I would pay a few dollars to use if required, and I'd be happy if it meant more and higher-quality software.
I feel like the freemium model they mention with subscriptions is just begging for F-Droid to be enshittified. F-Droid would really, really need to prove themselves with pay-once applications first for my liking before moving onto something so much more drastic.
And then ads are just a non-starter. Ads only exist to be psychologically manipulative, they're obnoxious as fuck in the present day, they're a privacy nightmare, and they're a vector for malware. I would see it as a betrayal of what F-Droid does for me, and I would actively see F-Droid as being sellouts who are only marginally better than using Aurora at that point.
- There are no FOSS payment methods. In fact, you're probably lucky to find a payment processor that will handle FOSS stuff at all.
- Well the problem with ads is people don’t want to pay for stuff period. And things cost money so here we are in our current state with ads being used to pay for everything online.
If they were talking about Privacy-Preserving Attribution like Firefox is experimenting with supporting on MDN, that would be one thing, but it doesn't sound like that's what F-Droid is talking about.
Not only are privacy and data protection founding principles for both Mobifree and F-Droid, the use of tracking-based in-app advertising poses a moral dilemma as well. If someone wants to gain access to an app, but does not have the financial means to purchase it, they can use it at a different kind of price - their user data.
F-Droid is also considering ads that contain no tracking, which removes that moral dillema, IMO:
It should be mentioned that it is possible to include in-app advertising without user tracking. However the lead conversion ratio drops dramatically, so the efficacy of this approach is not nearly as high.
That's basically what PPA is, advertising without tracking. If advertisers want to pay for it, then great.
Edit: Downvoting without responding like
- F-Droid is also considering ads that contain no tracking, which removes that moral dillema, IMO:
  You assume everybody is okay with ads.
  I'm not. My brainspace has been highjacked since I was a little kid by stupid advertisers. To this day, I remember ads for products that have disappeared decades ago and that I never gave a shit about at any point in my life.
  Why are advertisers allowed to force their shit into my head?
  I hate ads. I'm utterly intolerant of advertising. I hate the tracking and the malware that come with ads, but I hate ads even more. There are no moral ads. The advertisement industry is a despicable leech that needs to die.
  If F-Droid springs this shit on me, I swear to god I'm gonna start having murderous thoughts...
- The first quote is taken out of context:
  Not only are privacy and data protection founding principles for both Mobifree and F-Droid, the use of tracking-based in-app advertising poses a moral dilemma as well. If someone wants to gain access to an app, but does not have the financial means to purchase it, they can use it at a different kind of price - their user data.
  For me this reads as them explaining and condemning that dilemma, instead of considering it as an option for F-Droid.
- Because ads in Firefox went so well...
Did you read the linked article?

pretty sure the venn diagram of f-droid users and adblocking users is such a huge overlap that this may not pay off too well.

This is about them offering the developers of ads they deploy in fdroid options for revenue. Not ads in fdroid itself.
If they added ads I probably wouldn't even notice because of ad blocker lol.
I might uninstall F-droid today...

No thank you. This is a slippery slope.

If you want devs to make apps without any monetization you're limiting the number of devs that will develop for your platform.
Free only means you only allow passion projects that people work on as a side project or only the developers rich enough to have retired already.
Nobody who is struggling to get by can spend all their time developing a free app that has 0 monetization.
So they monetize on Google Play.
If you care about breaking Google's control of Android you should cheer on another paid marketplace, especially one out of the clutches of Amazon.
- If you want devs to make apps without any monetization you're limiting the number of devs that will develop for your platform.
  So?
  The point of fdroid is not to have evil pieces of shit injecting their apps with spyware and ads.
- F-Droid is literally just a repository. Linux manages it just fine to have repo driven "store" apps.
- Cryptomator is available on F-Droid but you still have to purchase a license to use it, although the dev has to maintain all the licensing and payment infrastructure which can be a roadblock for some.
- Free means freedom not cost.
  The problem with online payments is that they compromise privacy and require use of proprietary software and centralized servers
Yep, fuck that noise.

What the fuck? Did F-Droid change ownership (sell out to a hedge fund or something)? Or did I somehow time-travel to April 1, or what?

Well, some members of F-Droid's central board resigned nearly a year ago, citing issues that had been ongoing for a long time prior. Statement posted to Gitlab.
I've been slowly moving my app installations over to Obtainium ever since, and have been using NeoStore for the remaining F-Droid/Izzy installations.
I really hope this is a poorly timed joke

If it is a pay what you want model I am all for it. This would be similar to how elementary OS st

The problem with a fixed price is you have to always calibrate it according to the economy of the user's geolocation. What is cheap for a person from a developed world may be unaffordable for a third world county.

I would be totally down with a pay what you want model with most proceeds going to devs.
Basically a prompt to donate to the devs with 5-10% going to the package manager.
Some apps I've used are totally worth $1-$5
- Maybe it should be a pay what you want but it doesn't charge you for a week. So you can use the app and then decide whether to up the price if it's useful or cancel the payment if it doesn't work for you.

Targeted advertising is a huge no. No more of that.

Static advertising I can accept, but then who's responsible for vetting ads? I don't want scams displayed everywhere.

Devs definitely need ways to support themselves and sustain development. I've shared this screenshot from the app Secure Tether before:

I like to chip in a few bucks to my most used apps/services that are donationware, but after all the middlemen take their cut, the devs are left with peanuts. This IMO is the biggest hurdle when it comes to online monetization. A less expensive way to donate will certainly help.

Additionally, there are people who cannot or will not pay for apps, and I don't want to exclude them from being able to use an app/service they need.

Monetization like how Reddit Gold was and how Discord Nitro is are some of my favorites. Few extra perks and cosmetic features for paying users. Free users are still able to use the main product at no cost and you can gift them Gold/Nitro if they aren't able to purchase it themselves. I don't know how that would translate into an app store model though.

Ads, no, are not ok. F-droid can fuck right off if an ad appears, I'll just get apks from github

This is a good right to mention Obtanium, which is an app that basically streamlines that
Those same apks would also include ads. What makes you think if the developer has ads on fdroid, he won't on github?

I guess most won't bother to read the full post and will instead react negatively to the title.
Exactly, it talks about ads in one paragraph of a very long post, and it's mostly to talk about all the problems that an ad revenue model has for FOSS!
Honestly people need to RTFArticle. It's talking about the result of interviews with developers on how they would prefer to be compensated, not definitive plans for what is or is not going to be allowed in F-Droid in the future.

Damn, never thought I'd live to see the enshittification of F-Droid. I definitely won't be using it anymore if this happens.

I never expected this. What a shame.

Edit: the ads part are not an acceptable add-on for me, as someone who respects privacy and foss. I don't know of a single foss payment processor (lmk if one exists). A lot of people here are saying "pay what you want", but it's that way now, with GitHub donation links; we don't need this in the fdroid app.

They want to add paid apps where you need to make a payment before getting access to the App. It's not the same as the current donate approach
- No, I understood what they're trying to do. As far as I know, there are no foss payment processors, so adding a non-foss one would defy fdroid's current foss-first approach.
  Then, people on this post's comments are saying that they would be good with a "pay what you can/want" concept, but, again, that's already the case with donations. It's literally how donations work.

That'll be a big nope, thanks.

Edit: 20 years from now, FDroid will be worse than the Play store and we'll have a "new" store that functions like FDroid does currently.

Don't wait, install Droid-ify now.
- That's F-droid
- That sounds kind of ify to me.

But in order to create a solution that will be mainstream enough to make in-roads into the hold Big Tech has on the market

Firstly, I doubt their users asked them to be "mainstream", only their want for a piece of the app store profit pie is asking for that.

Secondly, if the only way to make in-roads on big techs hold on the market is to become just like them, then maybe they should be trying to find a better way.

F-droid is not going to beat the Play store at its own game. And it shows how naive the maintainers of F-droid are if they really believe that.

If they become the Play store, why wouldn't I just use the Play store?

You value Foss software which does not track?
Advertisment part not withstanding

Apparently they don't understand that the F in F-Droid is for FOSS.

I'm 100% all for adding a repository with paid apps, but it's not and shouldn't be marketed as F-Droid.

Paid and FOSS are not mutually exclusive. You can always build packages yourself if you don't want to pay. A well executed implementation might allow some projects to drop or reduce their play store efforts.
- I will download APKs off a website before I use anything with ads.
- Paid and FOSS are mutually exclusive. Open source and FOSS aren't.
  But how, you ask? Free means having the right to do whatever you want with your copy including make copies and redistribute. Thus, how can it be free while demanding a payment before allowing usage?
  That's why I said, FOSS Droid? Nah! Open Source Droid? Knock yourself out. I'm actually looking forward to supporting some of the developers of apps I love.
The F stands for “free” as in “freedom”, not “free beer”.
- Stripe is not free software nor is any online payment system these days.
  Not to mention online payments come at the cost of privacy
Which part of the acronym "FOSS" stands for "no advertisement" again? Remind me.
- The freedom part, unless they use an ad network that doesn't track users or impressions.
It stands for freedom as in protecting the 4 free software freedoms.
- https://lazysoci.al/comment/11161130

After reading that post, this sounds mostly like a whole lot of tracking. At that point I think I'll just use the Play Store lol, it has more selection if I'm going to have the same level of privacy anyway

I'm a bit of a fence sitter on the actual issue, I love F-Droid as is and fear change, but I'll say as someone who thinks they'll release on Google Play in the general future, the thing that pisses me off most about Google Play is they have a "repetitive content policy" which disincentivizes you from releasing a full paid app and a demo app. The main issue is, I don't want my app to categorize as "in-app purchases" if the only purchase is the "unlock full version", because that doesn't distinguish my app from any unethical whale-hunting casino-for-children microtransaction apps, and I don't want my app to claim to be free if it's just a demo.

At least, from a pro-user, communicate everything clearly, perspective, I feel that Google is compelling devs to dark-pattern-by-default on this subject.

LMK if I'm wrong about any of that.

It's always about Ads...

Oh, they start off as unobtrusive; maybe a little banner that shows when the app is opening, or a written mention with a link.

But, this doesn't generate much revenue. Next the banner persists, and suddenly a video plays. Just one, just once.

Eventually you open the app to pop up banners and autoplay videos, and wonder where the app is. Every line you cross with adverts makes the next line easier to cross.

Everyone here is bummed out, but fails to see the upside.

To rival the Play Store, there needs to be an alternative package manager on Android which hosts proprietary apps.

The outcome is a decrease in Googles revenue and eases the hold they have on Android as a Play Store dependant operating system.

If F-Droid didn't step up, Epic would be the only contender to the Play Store. At least this way we know there will be some degree of democracy.

I don't even read this as allowing proprietary apps. They are investigating allowing different monetarisation methods for open source apps and building open source tooling to help with that.
- My bad, poor choice of wording on my part.
  When I'm talking about proprietary in this context, I don't mean closed source, I mean it as in the financial sense of not being copy-left, or under any sort of licence which permits free adoption of their code.

Haven't used F-Droid since I started using GrapheneOS on my Pixel lol. Just use Obtainium.

If anything this would just give me suggestions on apks of paid apps to sideload for free

It should uphold free software and user freedom. If an app developer chooses to abuse user freedom the app should be pulled (and possibly forked) like Simple model tools.

This is f*** up. I have no issues donating to my favorite apps. However what they are talking about it pure enshitification plus proprietary software

Also donations can absolutely work

https://blog.thunderbird.net/2023/05/thunderbird-is-thriving-our-2022-financial-report/

I'm not sure I can be as pliant as others here. Being less of an activist and more of a user of convenience, if I am making PayPal payments somebody better give me a reason why I'm not just using the same store that came in by default with my phone.

- Those are all advantages for developers and activists. End users don't care or need to care. As an end user the only reason for keeping two stores in my phone is that one does a thing the other one doesn't, functionally. That's why Samsung can keep putting their dumb store on their phones forever but people just don't engage with it.
  Now, unlike the Samsung store when I was on a Samsung phone, F-Droid is something I do use, because there is a clear use case there: Play for all the commercial apps, F-Droid for non-commercial alternatives and a stuff that Google doesn't allow on Play for whatever reason.
  If F-Droid wants to make a push for being my only store, they better provide all the functionality, support, variety and convenience Play does, because Play comes pre-installed. If I can't go to F-Droid to be guaranteed to not have to deal with payments or MTX, then it better have every single thing I need. I'm talking every game, every app, every legacy piece of software. It better have the same one-click payment convenience I get from Google Pay. And it better still have a default option to search for completely free apps, or I'll have to go find a F-Droid alternative that does that for when I want to be sure I'm not getting any hidden fees with my app.

i am good with the subscription and pay once approaches they mentioned.

the iffy portion is the in-app payment sdk. i hope f-droid will be the one providing those to have it standardized.

in-app ads are kinda okay. i won't use said app, but if f-droid labels apps like those as how it labels apps with non-foss/features-you-may-not-like, it should be okay.

In app ads are very much not ok as they are often targeted and serve no benefit to the user. I have no issue with a donate button popup with a link but we already have Google play for spyware.

i'm fine with it as long as the privacy labels remain front and centre when downloading; especially if they clearly mark which apps are ad supported, subscription based, etc and don't prioritize them over foss/ad free

otoh, i use neo store so it probably won't matter

I see many issues with that / for them.

But I'm not against experimenting and finding out. We maybe need some free and open monetizing options, maybe also ad platforms. That would give people some more options, instead of relying on Google and Apple all the time.

Please just make it respect user privacy, be FLOSS and categorize the Apps, so it's clear to me what is and what isn't licensed Free Software.

We need a way to support foundational open source projects like browsers, a open source subscription platform might be the way.

Start off with apps that are already subscription like vpns.

For VPNs, though, you're generally paying through the VPN provider, not through the app store to have access to the app itself.
- It wouldn't be too much work for a open source friendly provider to accept subscriptions via f-droid, if they wanted to do it.
Can I just make a donation? Seriously though I don't see why F-droid needs to offer more than a donation link. If an app wants to put a donate pop up on first launch that's fine but don't turn it into anticonsumer bullshit.
- Nothing they said was anti-consumer. They're giving options. Software needs sustainable revenue especially if you want to break Free from Google
  So if you want to do a one-time donation go for it. If you want to do a recurring donation they would enable that. You don't have to do it

Wow, there is approximately 2 people in these comments that actually read the article.

I can't see this go well for them.

I get the idea. I also get not wanting to restrict devs and hence offering all kinds of payment options. But I cannot see this be visible for them given their target audience.