• 40 Posts
  • 136 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 15th, 2023

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  • Oh No! This is terrible news. This IMHO is one of the most irreplaceable projects out there. I don’t know of another cross-platform local file syncing app that comes anywhere close to this. I hope that it can continue even if it’s not through the Play Store.

    Google seems to be torpedoing open source developments with a number of decisions lately. Maybe they see F-Droid as a threat now that EU is making them open competition? Maybe they just don’t care.




  • True, but most orgs and devs would take the reliable monthly income rather than an unpredictable infusion every two years. If it’s a massive donor base, maybe those things even out. For smaller, active projects, I don’t mind giving a percentage to the bank knowing that they can rely on my donations every month. The larger annual gifts are usually reserved for orgs like clinics, food banks, and community institutions that can handle the fluctuations.


  • Not specifically software, but I divide my donations into three categories - for my budget, that’s basically the $10-20 range, the $20-500 range, and $500-2000. I track the donations I make over the year, with a target in mind. For me, the target is 10% of income.

    I decide which organizations are doing the most important work, and prioritize those. I try to donate monthly to those that I make use of regularly, then I give the rest as what comes up from day to day.

    I consider free software to be a social good, so I don’t separate it from other giving.






  • I’m currently about halfway through setting up a home server on an old/refurbished Dell PC. It has enough compute to transcode if needed, but no more. I’ll have to upgrade the storage to set up RAID. For software, I am running xubuntu, which offers the benefits of the great community and documentation of Ubuntu. It is very beginner friendly, but is a bit simpler and lighter than gnome. I’m running everything I can as Docker containers.


  • Hi, I’m your customer base.

    I’m a complete novice, no network or coding experience, but not afraid of computers either. I’m pretty worried about messing up something serious due to lack of knowledge.

    In the end, I didn’t choose Synology or the like due to:

    • lack of robust community support. I’ve noodled around with Linux for years and learned that community support is essential.

    • price. I’d pay 10% or 50% more for a good pre-configured system, but not 3-4x more (which is just the general feeling I get from Synology)

    • lack of configurability. I’m still not sure what I would like to do (and be able). I know I want to replace some storage services, replace some streaming services, control my smart home, maaaaybe access my files remotely, and probably some other stuff. I may want to have email or a website in the future, but that’s not on my radar right now.

    If there were some plug-and-play hardware/software solution that was still affordable and open, it would be a good choice for me.




  • I can think of a few apps that do this. It is certainly possible. I think it is ethical; if someone is not participating in the open source community, they miss out on the benefits. I think most people involved do contribute in some way. If someone just wants to use Google for the benefit of ease and discoverability, then they can pay for it. You’re still offering an ad-free app (presumably) and adding use value. It’s perfectly reasonable to suppliment the cost of development in is way.