Nearly every day, my kids come home from school and go on about some new app or game they and their mates are excited about.
  • helenslunch@feddit.nlEnglish
    4·
    2 hours ago

    I was able to talk my org into leaving Meetup for the same reasons. It’s just progressively getting worse, advertising to our users while simultaneously raising fees. Removing the ability to sync calendars. They also won’t give us the email addresses of any of our users unless we upgrade to “pro” (for an additional fee, of course), and even then, only the ones who RSVP to our events.

  • Meltrax@lemmy.worldEnglish
    201·
    11 hours ago

    If it is not open source, and you are not paying, someone else is and you are the product.

  • cheese_greater@lemmy.worldEnglish
    411·
    16 hours ago

    This is why on principle I almost 99.99% refuse to invest time or money in any app or service that is an ongoing cost that can be taken away or enshittified.

    It needs to not collect data, have a single purchase (or yearly feature update subscriptions that don’t affect the underlying functionality that is permanently available to me as a user) and if there’s any doubt about that I’m looking for the next, more permanent solution + negative review for enshittifiers

    • Troy@lemmy.caEnglish
      121·
      14 hours ago

      KDE Plasma recently added a once-annually notification requesting donations to the KDE e.V. (who pay for things like server infrastructure to support the project). Is this past your line, or acceptable?

      • cheese_greater@lemmy.worldEnglish
        20·
        13 hours ago

        I can handle that.

        • its a donation
        • its a presumably good product I want to continue to be funded and developed
        • once a year
        • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.worldEnglish
          11·
          7 hours ago

          What if it weren’t a donation? What if the situation were a once annual subscription where your use of the software is reliant on that subscription cost?

          Yes, I realize KDE is still open source, but what if they did this anyways?

          • cheese_greater@lemmy.worldEnglish
            2·
            4 hours ago

            Then thats a no. I’m not getting anything embedded in my workflow that can randomly decide it can’t work because the mother-ship is down or the business model needs to change.

      • pastermil@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        41·
        13 hours ago

        Ideally speaking: totally not cool

        Realistically speaking: they got solid stuff going, and plus you can disable it one way or another

        • HighlyRegardedArtist@lemmy.worldEnglish
          142·
          13 hours ago

          Idealistically and realistically: Totally and absolutely cool. If anything, they have a moral imperative to keep the project going, since there are users that depend on it, and doing that requires money. As such, people will need to be informed of how to contribute, so a pop up doing just that is a good way to achieve this. Why would this not be ok, even idealistically?

  • iltoroargento@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
    16·
    18 hours ago

    This is a great post. Additionally, if the exploitation isn’t occurring in a ramp up of costs to use basic functions of the service, it’s definitely occurring somewhere else and likely at the expense of your privacy.

  • 0x0@programming.devEnglish
    846·
    18 hours ago

    Couldn’t be arsed to read this, fed the link into an LMM and asked to summarize. This is the result:

    Dave Lane’s blog post, “Why ‘free’ proprietary software will always end in tears,” discusses the pitfalls of using proprietary software that is offered for free. He shares a personal story about a scouting group’s experience with a poorly implemented proprietary system and explains how such software often becomes a critical dependency for organizations. This dependency can lead to issues when the software’s limitations or costs become apparent. Lane argues that proprietary software, even when free, often leads to negative outcomes due to its restrictive nature and the control exerted by its developers

    • Moobythegoldensock@lemm.eeEnglish
      8·
      11 hours ago

      LLM completely whiffed on this one:

      • It’s not a poorly implemented app. It’s a well-implemented app that in the early stages is not monetized
      • The issue is not that limitations and costs are becoming apparent. The issue is that after the honeymoon period ends, developers seeking return on investment start locking features critical for business behind a paywall, and charge a very high premium fee for services that used to be free.
      • It’s not the restrictive nature of freemium software that becomes the issue. It’s the increasing enshittification of platforms to squeeze business customers for as much as they can before the platform collapses, betting on the established dependency making it too costly to switch to another platform.
    • yesman@lemmy.worldEnglish
      33·
      17 hours ago

      This is bad. Lane’s argument is that freemium software is tore up from the floor up. You’d get the impression reading this summery that he was just bitching about one program his Boy Scout troop used.