Not hating on open source, just let people use what fits their expectations and needs and stop deterring them with gatekeeping :P
UX = user experience
This one dude has made this app for years and constantly updates it, fixes things, is responsive, and makes a great app. He’s now been more loyal to his users longer than Reddit has, and I personally have used his app daily for 13 years.
Yeah, I’ll happily pay for it.
FOSS is great but it doesn’t pay the rent people, this guy is doing this mostly as his main gig. This isn’t some huge corpo, it’s one guy who makes his living building the app he loves. I’m sure he’d love to make it FOSS if he didn’t have to pay bills on anything.
FOSS can pay the rent. But the users that will complain about £20 for a lifetime of ad removal, definitely aren’t going to be the ones that help him should the bank come calling about late mortgage payments.
This is the same crap I left /r/Linux for way back in the day, so so so many people who are all “Linux is the best way and you’re stupid for even considering windows or mac” but unable to see realities. Yes, of course I love linux and FOSS, I use it as my primary driver, but we live in a society where free work doesn’t pay for housing.
You’re exactly right, most of the “FOSS Open Source supreme” people will look at an app that was lovingly crafted for months, call it garbage, and then demand they make it free. I just can’t even with them.
Meanwhile I’d love to see the stats on how many hours a week they put into FOSS apps on their own, and if they’ve given up their jobs to code for FOSS apps for the good of the community.
I’m a developer. I code mostly proprietary stuff for my company. I’d gladly go code for FOSS projects, but so far my bank is just completely unwilling to cancel my mortgage payments, and my electricity, water, sewer, internet, they all want to be paid too, so unfortunately I’m stuck doing this.
Seriously, I honestly feel like this is a bad look for Lemmy right now. Like who cares how people enjoy Lemmy? Also, why do people care so much about how others spend their money?
Some of these people don’t even realize they are using a closed source app (connect) and have no problem with it, but when price is introduced all of a sudden people are up in arms.
Don’t like the price? Continue to use Sync(with ads) or use the other plethora of FOSS alternatives.
These are the people that read Marx and then have a whole new world view, but they forget to take reality into account
I think the issue a lot of folks have is people like yourself always connecting it back to profit/salary. A large portion of us are interested in Linux/technology/foss for personal reasons and this corporate stuff not only reeks but makes enough noise to drown out better long term solutions. Yes I do it professionally too and yes I fight the good fight but we do what we need to do, this dude does not need to do this. UX really just isn’t important when we’re talking about expanding human capabilities, or I should say UX is important but pretty things aren’t. My opinion anyway but I was raised to care about this stuff by one of those wizard beards so to see your attitude is prevalent just sucks, no disrespect and nothing personal.
That’s fine as your opinion, but it’s not a popular one. Many people tried lemmy and left almost immediately because they want a better UI. We come from the old usenet boards so we know what UI was like back then, but now people expect a great UI/UX to use a service. So yes, I understand the principals, but we shouldn’t demonize people who pay money for a better experience, and if you’re a developer I’m sure you know that a good UX costs some money, but a great UX costs a lot of money.
There’s also a lot of younger techies on the board cause if you even got remotely deep enough you’d have to learn how to use those user board websites to solve your extremely specific problems.
I’m all for FOSS (currently working at a company that contributes heavily to FOSS) and am a huge supporter/contributor of FOSS, but the level of entitlement and superiority complex that I’ve seen from many in the FOSS community (including yours) is highly unappealing, and at times frankly revolting. That’s what truly reeks and stains FOSS.
There’s an expression I think about a lot, “You can’t think when you’re hungry”
Unfortunately principles and ideals are calorie-free
Took me a minute to process, but that is a powerful one. I’m going to borrow that. Thanks for sharing lol
Entitlement? They’ve taken everything from us, not just software either, have some empathy. All proprietary solutions will die, we have a right to build for the future and we have a right to educate about it.
I have no qualms about building for the future and educating. I fully support that. What I don’t support is the brigading and the lambasting of users who choose to purchase closed or proprietary products. That is their right as much as it is yours to advocate for FOSS.
If “taking everything from us” is the issue, there are appropriate channels and mechanisms to defend against that. If you don’t want your FOSS software to be used in a priority setting, apply the correct licensing models and pursue legal paths. GPL-licensed FOSS is generally and effectively avoided by for-profit organizations. If you purposefully choose MPL or Apache for your license models, that’s really your responsibility for legally protecting your FOSS IP. Apply the right licensing model, it is literally a single button to change it if your source is on GitHub.
Lemmy doesn’t have ads. If you have to pay to remove them don’t you think something is wrong with that? Why not pay for the community and useful features instead?
The ads finance the app, I think that’s perfectly fine (in principle).
I asked the dev a few weeks ago, this app is literally his livelihood. And he has a pretty good track record of delivering good software. Why not support him?
If you think more ads is the solution that’s good for you. Ads are society’s cancer, so I have little choice other than to block it. (Paying to get rid of ads perpetuates the idea that ads are profitable. That’s up to you.)
So the three options for him to keep developing that we know of are 1) Ads 2) Pay for a license or 3) Fundraising. He offers 1 and 2, and 3 is well known to not work, seriously nobody donates. Check out
npm fundand how so little people used it that they just removed it.If your only argument is “I deserve things that took a lot of time and effort for free” then you aren’t getting much sympathy from me.
If your only argument is “I deserve things that took a lot of time and effort for free” then you aren’t getting much sympathy from me.
Well, the user is posting from the piracy instance
ha
Check out npm fund
Instructions unclear, I ran the command and now I have a shitcoin called Bitcoin Cash.
Off topic, but I just have to ask… is your name a reference to the IBM database technology? Lol
You’re not paying to remove ads from Lemmy. You can continue using Lemmy ad-free on mobile via the mobile site or any of the other PWA’s or native apps. What you’re paying to remove ads from is Sync. The developer has decided that they need to be compensated to sustain the amount of effort developing and maintaining the app requires. If you don’t want to pay that price with cash or your eyeballs then don’t use it.
Nobody is forcing you to use Sync, nobody is forcing you to see ads. The beauty of a platform like Lemmy is you have the choice to use whatever client you want. That doesn’t mean you’re entitled to any of them.
So for one he’s adding an option to fund your instance as well, but also just because it’s an app doesn’t mean that it also doesn’t require money.
Your argument doesn’t come off as “so both should be free” but to me more like “oh yeah I’m surprised Lemmy doesn’t have an ad option”
Where did you read that he was adding something to fund instances?
I’ve been on open source since the early 90s. I know damn well how people make money off of it and who makes money off of it.
I support none of it if it starts including tracking and ads. It goes against the whole mindset. Google fanboys love it though.
That’s why there is an option to disable ads… Everyone wins unless they think this person’s work should be distributed for free.
Then pay to remove the ads. Someone has to pay at some point and it’s either you or the guy already spending his time to make the app.
How do you think OSS has been funded since the early 90s?
Nope, because I don’t have an issue with paying for something that I like and enjoy. Don’t like to pay? Nobody is forcing you to. Stop lambasting others for their choice.
Upvoted via Sync lol. FOSS is great, FOSS is irreplaceable, but for independent programmers FOSS doesn’t pay the rent.
FOSS doesn’t mean your product/service/app is free to use
You can make it FOSS and still have some sort of subscription for syncing between devices for example. Tasks.org did it like that.
Not to mention that you can run something on donations like lichess or F-Droid and have some extra money.
NPM did donations too and found that <0.01% of users paid anything, and the average for even the most used packages made on average $40 a month. That doesn’t pay a full time fry cook, let alone developer
I remember this being a problem on GitHub where developers would full on attack NPM packages that requested funding or donations in the installer.
Core-js had a really rough ride with that one, and babel (one of their main users) could not spare any development time to work on it, in the absence of the single maintainer.
It’s kind of disappointing in FOSS circles how some just refuse to acknowledge that devs need to eat - not everyone codes open source software as a side/passion project in spare time.
Yup, I remember the core-js debacle, one dude literally supporting the entirety of the internet, tried everything he could just to get some funding from literally anyone, that was the 40 dollar mark I got, he got 40 dollars to maintain core-js. I’m sure even Lemmy here uses it.
He would receive threats on his github on this project he started for fun saying there were bugs, or they needed features, and he said he even received death threats for just asking for funding. Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, and Google all use core-js but none of them gave him anything for using it anywhere. He even asked them all if he could just come work for them and maintain corejs since they all use it so heavily, none of them responded. So he just gave up, and said basically screw everyone, no one wants to support me, my family has sacrificed too much for this project that no one wants to pay for, and he got a real job and stopped updating core-js.
It’s a sad story. Everyone here loves to praise FOSS, and if we lived in the Federation we’d be able to support FOSS simply by using it, but if you’re using it and not supporting the developers then you’re not truly a FOSS supporter. I’m really honestly ashamed with how people here have acted in this thread, principals are great but so few are willing to put their money where their mouth is. The donation button for Lemmy devs is right at the top, how many people in this thread have even clicked on it, let alone donated?
FOSS is great but also developers’ gotta eat
Amen. And he got screwed from the Reddit api fiasco. If i remember correctly he was on the hook for as much as $250k in refunds because he’s had to shut the app down and refund subscribers.
The guy has to make a living, so I don’t begrudge him that one bit.
How fucking bad does your math need to be to not realize that 250k in refunds for a 6 month period where the app is unusable equals 250k in revenue for the first 6 months of the year? All y’all are like “dev needs to eat, he deserves our support!” and the guy’s pulling down over 500k/year.
That was Apollo, not Sync.
I’m pretty sure he already made millions from the app.
So he should start working for free? Or just retire and not create an app that many people enjoy?
Neither. I didn’t say anything. But since you challenge me to say something, I’d say since he’s very likely financially very secure, he could look for ways to monetize that do not mine user data.
The data it collects is purely from Google’s ad services. Removing ads removed all data collection as well from what other users with duck duck go were measuring.
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That’s our bar here? That someone who has put in years and years of hard Dev effort, every day, built up a community, took risks, etc, should just be happy he has food on the table?
Fuck that noise. I don’t care if he’s already s multi millionaire, he can charge whatever he wants, and we can choose to pay it or not. The man is running a business model here. He’s not done weekend warrior FOSS hacker. He deserves to be paid for his efforts.
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People can spend money on both, you know. There’s no hard rule that they have to be mutually exclusive.
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Listen mate. The issue here isn’t that people are saying that devs are starving. It’s that people here are some how associating someone who is (ostensibly)comfortable in life with the Bourgeois. You are not a class traitor for working your ass off on a product that many of your fellow Proletariats enjoy. Quite the opposite in fact. The real Bourgeois are the people who own the very server farms the app lives on. The real Bourgeois are the owners of the land the server farms live on. They are the people who are so rich you forget they exist.
Oh, well as long as you’re “pretty sure”.
The top comment said that he’s “gotta eat”, the other one said he got “screwed over by the API fiasco”. I’m not saying at all that he shouldn’t charge for his app, I’m not even saying he should change anything. I just don’t think it makes sense to act like he’s some poor starving guy. He’s a relatively rich businessman doing (very good) business.
All of course based on you being pretty sure he’s “made millions” from the app.
It’s funny how NONE of these comments saying that the dev earned millions have a legitimate source. It’s always just “pretty sure”, “I assumed”, “I figured” etc.
I wish we would all stop making things up and trying to use those same things as proof. Lol
I love the idea of Lemmy itself being FOSS but individual instances and apps being a competitive marketplace of for profit businesses.
That way profitable entities with skin in the game can contribute back to the core, as can anyone, while ensuring the communities exist on servers that actually have some kind of monetization.
Exactly! This is the playbook for how Linux has gained such a mainstay - while GNU/Linux on the desktop may still be pretty small, the extensibility and open-source nature of the platform has meant it’s been able to take over on all sort of alternative platforms - Android and Steam Deck being the big ones in the consumer space, but also larger distros being used regularly in enterprise/web hosting.
If everyone had refused to embrace Android or Steam Deck or any of the other distros run and maintained by for-profit corporations due to some preconceived idea of what the ‘correct’ way to use Linux is, it would still be doomed to irrelevance outside of tech circles.
but also larger distros being used regularly in enterprise/web hosting.
Red Hat is the 800lb gorilla in the room in that aspect. They put out a rock-solid product and their support is probably the best I’ve ever used regardless of any other factor.
They also pretty much own the Government/Gov Contractor Linux space because of the support and how simple it is to apply STIGs.
developers’ what
I’m using Sync right now. I’ve tried a few different lemmy apps and this is the only one that actually works without bugs. Maybe because it’s a paid developers full time job and not just some free side project?
I do wish it wasn’t a subscription. Apps are generally a flat fee.
yeah I think I’ll go to the ad removal fee. it’s expensive but I use it a lot 🤷♂️
I originally did the monthly sub because I didn’t have an option and that was the cheapest, it is kinda pricey but it’s light years ahead of what I was using
also I’m a developer and I think the guy who made it has probably working like mad to make this, and if it’s his sole income and it got pulled out from under him… idk. it’s a gamble to not just go get a 9-5 and work on this instead
bro has to eat and I already donate to my local instance.
The dev updated it a couple days ago so you could get Pro / ad-free with a one time payment.
There is a flat fee for add removal, it was patched in yesterday so make sure you’re updated
I love Sync but it’s worth noting some basic features aren’t implemented yet like submitting posts.
Wait… are you saying that you can’t post using Sync? Wtf.
It’s an early beta so far.
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You can comment just not make posts, which is the majority of the user base tbf. There ability to post posts is coming soon afaik
bahahaha - all these people ready to hand over their hard-earned and you can’t even submit a post?
Dev’s built a lot of user trust over the years. He says it’s coming within the week. The app JUST released.
The point is, he’s already charging an exorbitant ongoing subscription cost and it isn’t even finished. I do not understand you people.
The guy has run a top reddit app for years. He launched the app in beta so people could use it now rather than wait. I have full faith in him, it’s a great app and it’s basically a straight port of his reddit app to lemmy.
Comments like these really show you how much of Reddit has moved over to Lemmy. Annoying toxicity and all.
We may not like it, but this is what progress looks like?
Wait until the non-technical reddit exiles learn about defederation and start whipping themselves up into frenzies trying to purge things they mildly disagree with or flat out don’t like. Just like the good old days on reddit with banning people for participating in verboten subreddits.
Keep the worst of reddit and Twitter off lemmy, folks. Plenty of platforms for those types.
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And?
No one is forced to pay
Some people have jobs and can afford to pay for things.
He worked on it, you don’t even have to pay to use.
Lol
To be fair, a lot of those people are Reddit refugees that fled to lemmy.world and were fairly removed to begin with. I’m honestly not even sure why they left Reddit to begin with.
I wouldn’t say it’s entirely bug free. There are silent crashes and sometimes your position is lost but it works fine.
I just wish people would stop making software choice their whole personality
I use Arch Linux btw
I use Microsoft Windows, because I like a challenge 😎
F
Well windows is my primary work computer , since its office provided , however setting up things is so hard on windows , installing packages and all ! Although since recently chocolatey package manager has been good !
Perfect response.
same
Linux Mint user, I hope that’s not a problem
Most people don’t even think about software, they will happily use whatever came on their device by default. The next time you buy a new phone or laptop and it is crammed full of trash software it is because people DO NOT think about software choices at all.
Apparently that’s the only thing a lot of Lemmy users do
Same tbh this weird hive mind mentality thing I was happy to leave behind on reddit only to come to pretty much the same thing with a different coat of paint.
It’s important, especially in the early days of Lemmy that we set good groundwork for the infrastructure we’re going to use for the next 10 years or so.
By it’s nature, it certainly seems like there will be a wide variety of apps for accessing Lemmy.
I’m far more concerned about if Lemmy will be a thing for the next 5…let alone 10 years, than making sure everyone decides on the app I feel is the right one.
The three stages of a long-term FOSS user:
-
How the fuck do I do anything? I’m so lost.
-
I’ve somewhat mastered how to use it and became a power user. I’m happy about this, I’ve developed a sense of superiority over those who don’t use it, and will now promote it constantly to others like a goddamn cult. My SO has left me and my family has disowned me, but I don’t care, they are too ignorant to be as enlightened as I am.
-
(A decade or two later) I don’t even give a fuck anymore what somebody uses, this still works for me, and what works for you, works for you. Let’s just all coexist. OS and app development models don’t mean shit, common standards and protocols between them do. As long as I, a Linux user, can email a PNG to a Mac user and they can open it, we’re good.
It’s been like this since the mid-90s. Most of the people who are being annoying about it are in stage 2.
I have the (perhaps irrational) fear that sitting too comfortably in stage 3 leads to the kind of complacency that allows things like Web Environment Integrity to escape the “shower thought” phase.
On principle I believe that people shouldn’t feel forced to restrict themselves to FOSS - I use Steam and barely ever pirate games
(ignore my Lemmy instance I guess); however, I think people should put some effort in understanding the consequences of always choosing the path of least resistance, at the very least.That’s not an issue with FOSS vs proprietary, but with large corporations needing to be broken up.
FOSS isn’t immune to that, its a known thing that large corporations can use their dominance of a market segment to infiltrate even totally open standards and make demands with the threat of leaving the standard (and therefore resigning it to becoming irrelevant).
This is especially true of web standards. Chromium is FOSS, yet Google can use its absolute dominance in the market place to force through changes to things like HTTP standards (also FOSS). My understanding is Microsoft and Google both have strong-armed stuff into C++ in the past as well
Thank you. Exactly what is happening and why I’m so exhausted. Feels like the stupid Mac vs Windows debates back in the day, with the even more annoying Linux users.
Yes exactly!
Or Commodore 64 vs Apple //e vs IBM PC. Unix System V vs BSD vs VAX/VMS. Gawd. I’m long past those days.
I’m a Linux user. Hopefully not too annoying lol. Also a Mac and Windows user. Because they’re tools and I find 'em useful for different things.
I would be very, very surprised if the people getting bent out of shape about an app charging money and/or displaying ads use a flip phone or Linux/bsd phone and no closed source anything. (Car? Network router? Fridge? Television? Seriously? There’s closed source firmware in so many things…)
If I am wrong I will eat crow but… Also how? That seems like unhinged religious zealotry.
I don’t care for loss of privacy and big corps fucking everyone. But hey I run pihole and ublock. It’s not perfect but I have too many other far more important priorities, like friends, family, enjoying life, work, etc. to go all jihad against all closed source software.
I remember being all absolutist and dogmatic in my thinking when I was in my 20s. I gained perspective and chilled in the last 30 years.
I prefer my version of stage 3: I still care about software freedom and advocate for it (as well as related issues like interoperability, privacy, and right to repair) but without being an obnoxious fanboy for “Linux” or talking down to people who still use non-free technology for whatever reason.
Simply caring about an issue doesn’t make one a cultist or zealot, and not caring about anything does not make one enlightened.
So it’s just growing up and becoming a more mature person? Don’t think that applies specifically to FOSS enthusiasts. The same could be said about coffee hobbyists, for example.
And then
- Network effects matter, supporting open source software promotes its adoption and lowers barriers to entry for technological literacy and accessibility, accelerating the technological and social development of humanity
Although that doesn’t have the same ring as “fuck these dumb cult members because i don’t care and they shouldn’t either”.
Spot on. For that matter, this is the pattern I’ve seen in computers since the 80s.
My qualms about proprietary software is due to privacy, not cost.
I don’t feel superior for using FOSS, I feel more secure (and usually am)
What version of Linux or unix are you using on your phone?
Graphene Os, although I’d love to move to Post market OS and Plasma Mobile once it’s ready
Nice. I may make a move to something like that soon as my phone is getting near the end.
I’m currently a mix between 1 and 3. Learning 2, but not the shitty part of it.
I’m at 3 and it’s been quite annoying all these posts about people pushing Sync glory, saying that every other app is basically a buggy garbage (I’m exaggerating). Like, dude, I enjoy the other apps and I am not having bugs, can you enjoy your app without belittling others? Thanks?
Maybe the reason some people are pissy with Sync is because even with their community blocked it’s bloody everywhere on the all feed. Like guys I get it you like it but pls stop.
Launch hype is always like that. Give it a week and things will settle down.
-
I am currently using Sync, and while I agree that the UX is better I can also understand why so many on the Fediverse are against similar apps. They are here because corporations have ruined every other good thing on the internet and non-FOSS is very much associated with big corporations. While I would prefer that Sync were FOSS I also see the reality of Western society and how untenable creating an app would be without some kind of ad revenue. A majority of people are notoriously stingy and donations can only get you so far.
Also, Sync is one dev working full time by himself, not a big corp.
Reddit was two guys, YouTube was a small group of friends. Things grow fast, especially with a subscription price as high as Sync.
Sync has been a one man show for over a decade. Just how fast did you have in mind?
He also has always asked and worked with his community for what they want. I’ve been on Sync since 2014 and have nothing tying me to it, but the fact when I had issues he responded personally and got it fixed, really made an impression. I remember back when he took a break for a couple years to work on his degree, he came back swinging hard on this project.
I’ll gladly leave the app if it ever doesn’t have my interests in mind. However that time has not yet arrived.
These people aren’t arguing in good faith. They’re just stretching for any strawman they can to justify the fact that they don’t want to spend money or see ads. In other words “Do a bunch of work for me to benefit from for free”.
Sync has been good to me for the better part of a decade and after a little while on the free app I will most likely end up paying. He has earned it.
Reddit was two originally, but they had to bring in Aaron Swartz to get it working correctly. He was working on his own similar thing at the time, and was able to insert his code into their idea.
Then he did the typical Aaron Swartz thing, and got bored moved on to his next shiny project and got ousted for failure to do his job.
No shade to anyone who uses Sync, but the egregious thing to me is the price. Sync isn’t making the content, just like Reddit wasn’t, and they’re setting the price at a level that it feels like that’s what you’re paying for.
Any comparison to other software makes this pretty clear. If it were $4.99, I’d say that’s relatively fair, but charging 1/3rd of the cost of a new video game for an app that took less than 1/3rd of the resources to produce seems a bit absurd.
People can spend their money however they want, but I also don’t think it’s completely uncalled for to criticize the company for what appears to be price gouging.
The one time payment to remove ads is 20$.
People are really overblowing the price. As other ppl have mentioned, lemmy is less than a fraction of the user base of reddit.
The 4x price increase isn’t crazy. Devs need to make a living. I talk to Lj every now and then on Discord. Dude has been scrambling since the Reddit shut down to get out a working product. I really don’t think it’s price gouging to spend 20$ for an app I’ll be using for maybe 30-mins to an hour almost every single day.
The lemmy user base is tiny compared to reddit, so the price is higher.
We also seem to be willing to pay it. Personally, I think it’s worth it
Dude, at least people don’t use Reddit is what I think about this situation.
Sync is great and I’m happy to pay for a quality user experience to support a solo dev.
I’ve read somewhere that
it’s a team and not a solo dev but it was stated in a comment and I’m too lazy to do some research,so I’m sorry for this useless comment.Sync is one guy. Ljdawson. Always has been.
Aight thanks for the correction, I tried to google after my comment but found nothing. I need to scale up my ability to look for information.
I don’t mind so much that it’s not FOSS. Developer needs paying, fair enough
I want an app without an egregious Privacy Policy that doesn’t bundle code that shares “Usage Data” with advertisers
I use Linux and tons of other open source software daily. I have published and maintain a number of open source projects, and contribute regularly to others.
I also pay for closed source software and have a few proprietary apps that I sell.
There’s a place for both models, they’re not exclusive.
Obligatory xkcd comic.
Mega corporations are apparently equivalent to solitary, independent developers now.
Seems so, sadly.
Apparently for some every developer should work only for love and affection from their cardboard box and release their software as a free-for-all, but at least feature-complete before they starve, or else it gets a negative review.
You do know that it’s possible to charge for, pay for and financially support open source software, right? There are even things like Patreon as well.
Most people don’t do that. Look at the donor count for Lemmy World vs DAU.
LJ (dev of Sync) has had a patreon for years. The patrons pale in comparison to the people who used Sync for Reddit, and I’m sure Lemmy as well. Patron-types are outliers among outliers.
My point about still being able to charge stands. I’ve seen OSS do it - if you want it quick and convenient you pay e.g. through Google Play store or official website. Yes cheapskates will compile it themselves or fork it or grab a free version from F-droid etc but they were probably going to pirate it if it was closed software anyway.
Facebook was built using open source software…
People don’t like to make sacrifices today to avoid a potential disaster tomorrow. Especially when that disaster is only theoretical. (See the climate crisis.)
At work I’ve started taking an ‘I told you so’ photo of problems on the day they are identified so I can bring it up at 6 months later when it finally fails. Would recommend.
The great part of the fediverse is that everyone can use whatever they want. Personally I stick to Foss clients though.
Sync is 1 person
