I had a feeling they’ll put something like this, so I went in every now and then to see how infinity will react.
I really loved the app, devs did an amazing job
I don’t think it’s ironic at all - Infinity is and always has been a Reddit client. Subscription fees seems to be the only possible way for it to continue to be a Reddit client and if only a small number of people are willing to pay, then that’s fine. It’s an open source project and doesn’t need to make enough money to pay a salary. It just needs to pay the API costs.
Infinity also doesn’t need any of it’s existing contributors to continue using it, they could all move on (perhaps start work on a Lemmy clinet?) and other people might keep developing Infinity. Open source projects change hands all the time.
If someone wants to make the app into a client for another platform, they can simply fork Infinity. It doesn’t make any sense for Infinity itself to change into a totally different app. And it would be totally different, Lemmy has different features.
As I wrote elsewhere, I just worry that the dev will get screwed somehow. While before they only needed to make an app and let it loose, now they’ll need to constantly be on a lookout if their users API usage doesn’t exceed what they’re paying in subscription. Or if a thousand bots buy their app with stolen credit cards and Google holds their money. Or if someone hacks their app/server, figure out their API key and racks up a billion calls in spam.
They’re turning a hobby dev project into a business, to be exchanging thousands of money between Google, themselves and Reddit, potentially being in the red for any number of reasons, and dealing with taxes and accounting on top of that.
I mean this is exactly what the Apollo dev said he doen’t want to deal with (he just anticipated a much larger volume than Infinity, but the principle is the same).
Apparently the dev is just starting their first job and don’t have time to port the app to Lemmy, how will they have time if there’s some disaster caused by Reddit?
Maybe it will work out for them, but I’d be super careful doing any business with Reddit at this point.
I don’t think it’s ironic at all - Infinity is and always has been a Reddit client. Subscription fees seems to be the only possible way for it to continue to be a Reddit client and if only a small number of people are willing to pay, then that’s fine. It’s an open source project and doesn’t need to make enough money to pay a salary. It just needs to pay the API costs.
Infinity also doesn’t need any of it’s existing contributors to continue using it, they could all move on (perhaps start work on a Lemmy clinet?) and other people might keep developing Infinity. Open source projects change hands all the time.
If someone wants to make the app into a client for another platform, they can simply fork Infinity. It doesn’t make any sense for Infinity itself to change into a totally different app. And it would be totally different, Lemmy has different features.
As I wrote elsewhere, I just worry that the dev will get screwed somehow. While before they only needed to make an app and let it loose, now they’ll need to constantly be on a lookout if their users API usage doesn’t exceed what they’re paying in subscription. Or if a thousand bots buy their app with stolen credit cards and Google holds their money. Or if someone hacks their app/server, figure out their API key and racks up a billion calls in spam.
They’re turning a hobby dev project into a business, to be exchanging thousands of money between Google, themselves and Reddit, potentially being in the red for any number of reasons, and dealing with taxes and accounting on top of that.
I mean this is exactly what the Apollo dev said he doen’t want to deal with (he just anticipated a much larger volume than Infinity, but the principle is the same).
Apparently the dev is just starting their first job and don’t have time to port the app to Lemmy, how will they have time if there’s some disaster caused by Reddit?
Maybe it will work out for them, but I’d be super careful doing any business with Reddit at this point.