this post was submitted on 02 Jun 2023
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The thing about most of these apps is that they are actually proprietary closed source and have advertisements to fund development/make money. I dont quite know how they could be convinced to develop an app for a platform that (I think) explicitly does not allow ads. I haven't really used any of these except baconreader years ago so I'm really not sure how these apps are licensed.
However I hope some of them see the light of FOSS even on mobile platforms and decide to contribute to jerboa or even start a new Lemmy app.
Its not our preference of course, but they could make closed source apps for lemmy. I'd rather they build them out in the open, and they could still charge for them or accept donations if they like. Open source devs need to get paid too.
RedReader is FOSS and has been my favorite Reddit app experience for several years.
The dev has already expressed an interest in possibly refocusing on Lemmy, too.
It's a bit of an off-topic given the reason why you've linked that Reddit post, but I'm analysing a few things that the RR dev said and I've noticed something:
The decision is controversial even within Reddit Inc., and whoever is taking the shots is not explaining it fully even to the people interacting with the third party devs.
This hints that there's something really shady going on, like external intervention - but from whom?
Likely Project Managers, who are above the day-to-day developers. PMs take any product and squeeze the life out of it.
Ah, that explains it. A "middle caste" wouldn't bother explaining its decisions to the "grunts", even if the "grunts" would be better informed on the consequences of the decisions being taken.
This will backfire badly for Reddit - I predict that content creators and moderators will be specially affected by killing the third party apps. The platform will see a short-term increase of revenue, followed by a crash, as if they were killing and butchering a milk cow.
Is that really forbidden, though? Lemmy itself is open source, but that doesn't mean clients are forced to be as well(there are plenty of closed source email clients, after all, even though the protocol is open).
and as a user, I can't see paying for an app/subscription or using an app with ads when the website works well on mobile. Good luck to those devs though, I hope the ones that get most of their income from it can find new projects.