I use some of those via F-Droid, but I've stopped installing updates because the nagging to "upgrade" to a "monetized" version is getting worse.[1] I'm worried that they will start breaking the free versions, and thus can no longer trust their updates.
Are you using a different F-droid source than everybody else?
Say I'd like to see some nagging from Simple Notes Pro. What do I need to do? (And why, conceptually, does Simple Notes Pro, already the paid version, include nagging in the first place?)
I use the same group of apps plus the calendar. What do you use for that? I'm finding it great with a couple of niggles. Not opposed to jumping, even there's some friction.
Your false dichotomy is disingenuous, a distraction/derailment to the discourse, and does not engage in addressing the issue of a person wanting to pay the developer yet having no privacy-respecting way to do so.
Please revisit site guidelines on "snark".
Yes! It's a terminal emulator and Linux environment for Android. You can do pretty much anything with it. Typing on a phone is hard but you get used to it. Programming while lying in bed is just too comfortable.
I've written way too much code with vim inside Termux. I created an entire programming language inside Termux. The first programming language to be born inside a smartphone, perhaps? Only thing I haven't managed is Android app development. Yet.
I didn't realize there was an android version, I'll have to take a look. I am incapable of using a windows computer without Total Commander, I've used it more than any other program, full stop. Probably since I was 4 or 5 years old. Life without it is unimaginable.
Wait, people are upset that the compiled versions have free trials and then paid versions? I'm looking at the code for all these apps right now, you can compile your own apks and never pay a dime if you want, are people really upset about this monetization strategy?
Unfortunately, the vast majority of users don't want to spend a dime on any digital good ever. In fact, they are very offended when asked to pay and will gladly leave 1 star reviews thinking that they are defending their interests. They won't admit to it but they are instead paying with their privacy and attention. This is the reason we have tech monopolies financed by marketing and user data for sale on the dark net. And the worst bit of it all is that the current state of affairs is hopelessly irreversible
You are absolutely right. Every HN thread about a consumer product that is paid is full of why it is bad, or why people would gladly pay if it had 10 more orthogonal features, or they have a better way to support the creator, or the product doesn't deserve payment for some random reason but it is OK to use it without compensating the creator.
The irony is a good % of HN is well paid due to information related jobs. And their work is valued only due to artificial scarcity of information.
> Unfortunately, the vast majority of users don't want to spend a dime on any digital good ever.
The subscriber count for Netflix, Disney+, Spotify, etc. easily disproves this. Please, while making a good argument, try not to include grandiose overstatements that discredit your entire position for no good reason.
Subscriber count is not telling of what the "vast majority" is doing. Subscriptions to quasi-gate-keepers also can't be compared to "street market" one-time purchases
I personally don't consider what my direct experience will be, but instead the total sum of the collective experience all users will have. I want to support something everyone benefits from, not myself. Consequently, I don't want to support anything that doesn't trend the community toward my ideals.
As an example, the Mastodon project and mastodon.social are run by a non-profit. They have their own mastodon account which discusses updates, advertises merchandise to support them, and could ask for sponsors or donations if needed. Users can subscribe to their feed if they want, and support them should they need help, while users who don't want advertisements won't be affected. I'm confident in the stability of this model for them so I chose to make my Mastodon account on their instance so I can trust I won't have to transfer to another someday should one shut down.
I'm hoping the digital space evolves in this direction and we approach a post-advertisement economy.
Otherwise, enshittification keeps ruining things and we can't rely on the long-term stability of anything. Just look at Google.
It's sad that "without ads and unnecessary permissions" is so rare that it makes it to the HN front page. It really should be the other way around: "A blacklist of apps with ads and unnecessary permissions" should be newsworthy.
App stores are a wasteland. The vast majority of apps have "in-app-purchases" and try to nag users into paying a never ending stream of extras, or are filled with ads. Where are those simple apps that cost $1-$10, pay once, can use forever and have no ads?
For example I am trying to put a game on my child's iPad. The game is free but you only got one level open. If you want to play the other levels you got to pay. But it won't simply unlock the game, no, only a small part. If you want more, pay more, there is no end to the "buying" phase. This is a no-go situation with children. They can be tricked into clicking these in-app sales and getting stuck there. And that's what the developers want.
I want once I pay for a game, to know that 1. it will never advertise upsells or anything else 2. it will never block access for any feature 3. there are no trick links, buttons or UI flows to get children into the buying side of the app. On AppStore I can only find the Apple Arcade games to be clean, and those are subscription based.
The moral - I want to buy and have no choice of decent apps. How did we get into this mess after 15 years of App store evolution?
Nintendo consoles seem to provide the experience you're looking for. Clean and curated games with no ads or subscriptions. And the games tend to be of higher quality, focused on actual gameplay as opposed to the dark patterns common on phone apps (e.g. time-limited "stamina" and other psychological manipulation tricks to encourage addictive behavior).
> Nintendo consoles seem to provide the experience you're looking for. Clean and curated games with no ads or subscriptions.
This mostly matches my experience, for example Nintendo Switch occasionally gets some critique for being a bit dated (apparently a new version is in the works), but it feels like a step up from mobile gaming and has all sorts of great games, from Legend of Zelda to Animal Crossing and even well made ports from other platforms.
That said, there are also free games that do have aspects of monetization, but I think it's easy enough not to save card details or anything like that.
Honestly, I kind of wish the first Switch generation would hang around for longer and developers would keep making well optimized games for it.
How does this work financially? From what I understand, access to the console market involves considerable upfront cost, so these games will hardly be from independent developers. If the games come from studios they wouldn't offer them for free, so who pays for these apps?
The business model is simply selling the game (typically in a $10-60 range), and sometimes additional DLC (downloadable content).
There are many games by independent developers on consoles, too. For example, Nintendo regularly releases "Indie World Showcase" promotional videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brNLmMMB-J4
I have found high-quality pay-once apps with no advertising, and I've done it with minimal effort.
Unfortunately, it won't do any good to recommend them to you, or their developers, because none of them are games, and the apps are so niche that nearly nobody on HN will want to purchase them anyway.
But they do exist; they're on the Play Store, hidden in plain sight.
I wish there was an f-droid for iOS; not for installing from, just as a way of searching for apps (including paid apps) that don't have ads or in-app purchases.
(I tried finding an iPad version of workrave/safeeyes, but all the apps are full of nags to pay for extra features or show ads in their break-time etc.)
My daughter and I made a little game (mostly to teach her programming) and it turned out not too bad. I thought it could be a good motivation for her to get it into the Apple App Store too, where her friends can see and download it.
We don't want any money, so no monetizing. The app will not be popular as we don't intend to do any marketing.
I realize that this is quite the opposite of what Apple wants.
Suppose the quality of the app is not worse than that of its paid and ad infested competitors, my question is: Does it have a chance to get past the review? Does it have a chance to stay in the App Store in the long run, assuming we do all the necessary updates for new iOS versions and critical bug fixes but nothing more?
Basically my question is: Will this be an uphill battle, because Apple doesn't earn anything from us?
If anyone has experience with a completely free iOS app, I would love to hear from you.
Yes, it will be up-hill. Apple development costs $99/year to Apple. You'll have to update and test on new releases - the platform vendors churn turns into your heavy lifting. Apple review process for your app could be tedious every time you release.
I've worked on a few FOSS apps in the Apple App Store and currently consider it "not worth it".
I've written to government officials about their anti-consumer practices.
I have long wanted an app store that only carried ad- and unnecessary-permission-free apps, both free and paid. no one seems inclined to set one up though.
I installed these apps on my mother's smartphone (Motorola) after the existing apps became unusable because they slowed down or displayed large banner ads.
Thank you for these great apps. I just donated to you :)
I have had bad experience with their apps, I don't particularly remember what it was as it was a few years ago but it was their notes app. They limit some basic features and push you to buy their premium versions.
Warning, the reaction to massive security issues in a bundled PDF reader of the file manager made me uninstall all of these apps. Safety of my device and data is paramount.
I used the file manager and the gallery apps but I stopped using them since they started to reduce functionality to nudge people to the paid versions. Of course there is nothing wrong in working for money, I do, but I replaced them with other open source and free as beer apps from F-Droid. Selling open source is hard. To put it mildly, there is lot of competition on price. Selling closed source is hard too, because of competition from open source.
I'm using Material Files and Aves Libre now. Aves doesn't have an editor and I'm using either the one from Samsung's Gallery, which I can't remove anyway, or Google's Snapseed. Google can snoop on me with the OS and the other apps of them I'm using (almost only Maps) so I'm not worsening my privacy level too much.
The fitness apps looked exactly like what I need, but when going to the play store says they were made for an older version of Android. Visiting Github seems like they aren't actively maintained either.
Fork them, I guess. That remains the main big advantage of open source.
I've had closed source apps, even paid ones, disappear without a trace from my phone and tablets, presumably after an OS update. I find that an incredibly shitty thing to be subjected to. If an OS update is going break any apps, I'd like to be warned about that.
I'm very discouraged when I click their Blog page and see headlines like "Our best apps are now paid" and "Trial period." These apps have popups asking for support, which 100% are advertisements contrary to the thread title. Their apps which previously were free and received updates no longer get those updates and have been replaced with paid ones. This is a warning sign of enshittification and degradation of reliability. There are a multitude of ways they could someday stop updates to these apps too to replace them with another monetization scheme.
You get the "Pro" apps from F-Droid, including the "ThankYou" App. I never got any nagging from them (and yes, I donated, but that did not have any technical consequences and is not necessary).
I want to recommend things everyone benefits from, not myself. Consequently, I don't want to support anything that doesn't trend the community toward my ideals.
For instance, the Mastodon project and mastodon.social are run by a non-profit. They have their own mastodon account which discusses updates, advertises merchandise to support them, and could ask for sponsors or donations if needed. Users can subscribe to their feed if they want, and support them should they need help, while users who don't want advertisements won't be affected. I'm confident in the stability of this model for them so I chose to make my Mastodon account on their instance so I can trust I won't have to transfer to another someday should one shut down.
I'm hoping the digital space evolves in this direction and that we approach a post-advertisement economy.
Otherwise, enshittification keeps ruining things and we can't rely on the long-term stability of anything. Just look at Google.
Having to put food on the table, plus the shitty business model (or lack thereof) of open source, means that it is probably either charging or not having the apps at all. The author has written code and released it under liberal licenses for years, and now they want (or worse, need because their life conditions changed) some income from the effort.
> they could someday stop updates to these apps too to replace them with another monetization scheme
The code is still being written and kindly released under the terms of an open source license, so if that happens, I'd expect that sufficiently motivated people moved by strong needs or ideals would be able to fork it and keep using (and possibly even improving) them without issue, as the license explicitly allows for it.
I recommend all of my friends and family to use this when searching for Android apps https://playsearch.kaki87.net/ and simply tick the 3 checkboxes at the bottom.
These apps have existed for many years now and the "business model" behind them has changed over the times. These apps are available on Google Play and F-Droid. Originally, the apps were completely free, and there was a "Thank You" app which you could purchase on Google Play. This "Thank You" app does almost nothing, it only allows you to change the color theme of the apps and is more meant as a "donation app" for the project.
Then, in 2018, the author decided to develop "Pro" versions of the most popular apps: Gallery, Calendar, Contacts, File Manager, etc. They can be bought on Google Play. These apps are still fully open source, you can build them yourself if you want, but much easier: they are still published on F-Droid, including the "Thank You" app.
Understandably, the author does not really advertise that everything he does is available completely for free on F-Droid. If you install it from there, please consider to donate. I find these apps to be usually excellent and have used them for years.
Yeah but the price is symbolic... and maintaining app on Android, even without adding any features, requires some work to catch up on the changes made to the system
Developer's response to several of the negative reviews complaining about their data being held hostage:
> Hey, it is just a tiny one time payment, you will never have to pay again :) lf you uninstall the paid app within 2 hours, you are automatically refunded. If you want a refund anytime later just contact us
While I understand and respect the developer's desire to monetize, creating a set of expectations and then pushing an update to require payment for accessing local data feels like ransom. Have to be careful with the trust users place in you.
I do not have personal experience and it appears that the f-droid versions have no anti-features, but those comments at Play store were specifically talking about their data being held hostage.
Mindustry (a tower defense factorio supcom-ish game) follows a similar model. Its paid on Steam, its free and GPLv3 on GitHub (and Android), and there don't seem to be many complaints about it.
IMO more closed source devs need to follow this model, or the "open source but proprietary" model that's working for Barotrauma.
I think aseprite does the same, which is cool, but I find its build scheme a bit complex, depending on not so simple to build libraries. I'm not proficient enough with the tech stack used but it seems unnecessary complex. Eh, I prefer the guy/gal to be paid. (Edit: typo)
> Understandably, the author does not really advertise that everything he does is available completely for free on F-Droid. If you install it from there, please consider to donate. I find these apps to be usually excellent and have used them for years.
it literally is (see `.plus`); in fact, if you install from F-droid, and then open Google Play to look at OsmAnd+, `Install` button is gone, just `Open`
I actually wanted to support osmand financially, only at the time the only way I could find to do so was through the play store, which I didn't want to use.
I've tried the simple apps and they are ok, but there are so many good alternatives on fdroid they don't stand out in any way.
Osmand is (or was last I checked) also available paid on the Amazon Fire store.
If you get Amazon digital credit, e.g. from a "prime day delivery", you can use the fire store to donate that money to Osmand or whatever other app of preference.
> Then, in 2018, the author decided to develop "Pro" versions of the most popular apps...
That's when I started getting notifications to get the pro version every once and a while, even though I had bought the thank you for $15. It would have been nice to get grandfathered. I was and still am thankful. They are great apps for me.
Yeah, similar thing for me. I spent a good bit (probably ~Rs 30 of my Rs 50) Google Play Balance on the thank you app as I loved the idea. When I saw the "paid" versions, even though I got all of them when they were free in the introductory period it left a bad taste in my mouth.
(If you're wondering how someone had so little money to spend/disposable income try being a kid in a third-world country.)
I'm surprised at the amount of negativity in the comments. I use several of the tools and they are great. They do one thing well and don't have the feature bloat that a lot of apps suffer from.
I don't think that's necessarily fair in this context, the app's USP initially was being free and solid/good quality. Without the free part it's not the same.
As someone who's a bit disappointed by the app, here's my perspective -
1. In the beginning, these were completely free apps with no limitations (that I remember).
2. Then some features required a payment (if you were getting it from the play store apparently. I don't know about fdroid but I don't think that was advertised - and yes, apps like TaskbarX do advertise that they're free elsewhere.)
3. People called it (rightfully, in my opinion) akin to a bait-and-switch.
"But wait, you never paid anything! What's the problem?"
Well, if they were never offered under the guise of "Hey here's a foss app that's free!" - like ZorinOS - it might have been an easier pill to swallow. Some people including me paid for the "Thank You" version because we wanted to support a dev who was doing commendable work. But if you make it paid... that's kinda crappy.
Also (maybe?) see - OpenAI happily running away with money now that they can. Do you support that decision too?
147 comments
[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 244 ms ] thread[1] https://www.simplemobiletools.com/blog/our-best-apps-are-now...
Huh? The versions in F-Droid are the monetized versions. They don't include any nagging. I've been using them for years.
Say I'd like to see some nagging from Simple Notes Pro. What do I need to do? (And why, conceptually, does Simple Notes Pro, already the paid version, include nagging in the first place?)
I use gallery, contacts, and file manager from F-Droid, up to date, and no ads or nags at all, ever.
Simple Calendar works with it for individual calendars, but the Google one does shared calendars with less friction.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.simplemobi...
but now it is a "14days free trial, then pay"
I've written way too much code with vim inside Termux. I created an entire programming language inside Termux. The first programming language to be born inside a smartphone, perhaps? Only thing I haven't managed is Android app development. Yet.
It's "ugly" though.
https://www.ghisler.com/
It even has plugins for ftp and I believe sftp.
The Android version works great. I don't know of a better alternative.
Just like the whole Android ecosystem. The only thing "pretty" in Android were some buttons in some games.
There is also this UI religion that everything must be black with gray or white with gray.
https://sites.google.com/site/ghostcommander1 https://f-droid.org/packages/com.ghostsq.commander/
I sincerely prefer total commander.
Total commander also has all those goodies, including browsing and backing up apps and using FS providers.
Plus ghost commander had this stupid approach about copying into SD card, where if the source was external it had to copy to internal storage first.
If it failed the files would just linger there permanently.
https://github.com/SimpleMobileTools/Simple-Calendar/issues/... https://github.com/SimpleMobileTools/Simple-Calendar/issues/...
The irony is a good % of HN is well paid due to information related jobs. And their work is valued only due to artificial scarcity of information.
The subscriber count for Netflix, Disney+, Spotify, etc. easily disproves this. Please, while making a good argument, try not to include grandiose overstatements that discredit your entire position for no good reason.
As an example, the Mastodon project and mastodon.social are run by a non-profit. They have their own mastodon account which discusses updates, advertises merchandise to support them, and could ask for sponsors or donations if needed. Users can subscribe to their feed if they want, and support them should they need help, while users who don't want advertisements won't be affected. I'm confident in the stability of this model for them so I chose to make my Mastodon account on their instance so I can trust I won't have to transfer to another someday should one shut down.
I'm hoping the digital space evolves in this direction and we approach a post-advertisement economy.
Otherwise, enshittification keeps ruining things and we can't rely on the long-term stability of anything. Just look at Google.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31490250
For example I am trying to put a game on my child's iPad. The game is free but you only got one level open. If you want to play the other levels you got to pay. But it won't simply unlock the game, no, only a small part. If you want more, pay more, there is no end to the "buying" phase. This is a no-go situation with children. They can be tricked into clicking these in-app sales and getting stuck there. And that's what the developers want.
I want once I pay for a game, to know that 1. it will never advertise upsells or anything else 2. it will never block access for any feature 3. there are no trick links, buttons or UI flows to get children into the buying side of the app. On AppStore I can only find the Apple Arcade games to be clean, and those are subscription based.
The moral - I want to buy and have no choice of decent apps. How did we get into this mess after 15 years of App store evolution?
This mostly matches my experience, for example Nintendo Switch occasionally gets some critique for being a bit dated (apparently a new version is in the works), but it feels like a step up from mobile gaming and has all sorts of great games, from Legend of Zelda to Animal Crossing and even well made ports from other platforms.
That said, there are also free games that do have aspects of monetization, but I think it's easy enough not to save card details or anything like that.
Honestly, I kind of wish the first Switch generation would hang around for longer and developers would keep making well optimized games for it.
There are many games by independent developers on consoles, too. For example, Nintendo regularly releases "Indie World Showcase" promotional videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brNLmMMB-J4
Unfortunately, it won't do any good to recommend them to you, or their developers, because none of them are games, and the apps are so niche that nearly nobody on HN will want to purchase them anyway.
But they do exist; they're on the Play Store, hidden in plain sight.
There is https://nobsgames.stavros.io/ but it's just for games ;-)
(I tried finding an iPad version of workrave/safeeyes, but all the apps are full of nags to pay for extra features or show ads in their break-time etc.)
We don't want any money, so no monetizing. The app will not be popular as we don't intend to do any marketing.
I realize that this is quite the opposite of what Apple wants.
Suppose the quality of the app is not worse than that of its paid and ad infested competitors, my question is: Does it have a chance to get past the review? Does it have a chance to stay in the App Store in the long run, assuming we do all the necessary updates for new iOS versions and critical bug fixes but nothing more?
Basically my question is: Will this be an uphill battle, because Apple doesn't earn anything from us?
If anyone has experience with a completely free iOS app, I would love to hear from you.
I've worked on a few FOSS apps in the Apple App Store and currently consider it "not worth it".
I've written to government officials about their anti-consumer practices.
I encourage you to get a Nintendo switch and not connect it to a network.
Very high quality game (cartridges) that you pay for once.
Thank you for these great apps. I just donated to you :)
I think they are also moving into the device business too: https://simplephone.tech/eu/product/simple-phone/
https://github.com/SimpleMobileTools/Simple-File-Manager/iss...
https://github.com/SimpleMobileTools/Simple-File-Manager/iss... where the developer shows no grasp of security "what can happen to an app without internet access?"
A "simple" file manager should not come with a PDF reader.
I'm using Material Files and Aves Libre now. Aves doesn't have an editor and I'm using either the one from Samsung's Gallery, which I can't remove anyway, or Google's Snapseed. Google can snoop on me with the OS and the other apps of them I'm using (almost only Maps) so I'm not worsening my privacy level too much.
You get the "Pro" apps from F-Droid as well.
Summary: All Privacy Friendly Apps:
- are Open Source (GPLv3) and their source code can be viewed an Github by anybody
- used minimal permissions
- do not neither tracking mechanisms nor advertisement
https://secuso.aifb.kit.edu/english/105.php
I've had closed source apps, even paid ones, disappear without a trace from my phone and tablets, presumably after an OS update. I find that an incredibly shitty thing to be subjected to. If an OS update is going break any apps, I'd like to be warned about that.
For instance, the Mastodon project and mastodon.social are run by a non-profit. They have their own mastodon account which discusses updates, advertises merchandise to support them, and could ask for sponsors or donations if needed. Users can subscribe to their feed if they want, and support them should they need help, while users who don't want advertisements won't be affected. I'm confident in the stability of this model for them so I chose to make my Mastodon account on their instance so I can trust I won't have to transfer to another someday should one shut down.
I'm hoping the digital space evolves in this direction and that we approach a post-advertisement economy.
Otherwise, enshittification keeps ruining things and we can't rely on the long-term stability of anything. Just look at Google.
> they could someday stop updates to these apps too to replace them with another monetization scheme
The code is still being written and kindly released under the terms of an open source license, so if that happens, I'd expect that sufficiently motivated people moved by strong needs or ideals would be able to fork it and keep using (and possibly even improving) them without issue, as the license explicitly allows for it.
These apps have existed for many years now and the "business model" behind them has changed over the times. These apps are available on Google Play and F-Droid. Originally, the apps were completely free, and there was a "Thank You" app which you could purchase on Google Play. This "Thank You" app does almost nothing, it only allows you to change the color theme of the apps and is more meant as a "donation app" for the project.
Then, in 2018, the author decided to develop "Pro" versions of the most popular apps: Gallery, Calendar, Contacts, File Manager, etc. They can be bought on Google Play. These apps are still fully open source, you can build them yourself if you want, but much easier: they are still published on F-Droid, including the "Thank You" app.
Understandably, the author does not really advertise that everything he does is available completely for free on F-Droid. If you install it from there, please consider to donate. I find these apps to be usually excellent and have used them for years.
On the AppBrain page you can see the rating nosedive from 4.6 stars (out of 5) to less than 2: https://www.appbrain.com/app/simple-gallery/com.simplemobile...
Only when installed from Google playstore.
> Hey, it is just a tiny one time payment, you will never have to pay again :) lf you uninstall the paid app within 2 hours, you are automatically refunded. If you want a refund anytime later just contact us
While I understand and respect the developer's desire to monetize, creating a set of expectations and then pushing an update to require payment for accessing local data feels like ransom. Have to be careful with the trust users place in you.
Mindustry (a tower defense factorio supcom-ish game) follows a similar model. Its paid on Steam, its free and GPLv3 on GitHub (and Android), and there don't seem to be many complaints about it.
IMO more closed source devs need to follow this model, or the "open source but proprietary" model that's working for Barotrauma.
It's source available, not open source.
It's the same with OsmAnd
it literally is (see `.plus`); in fact, if you install from F-droid, and then open Google Play to look at OsmAnd+, `Install` button is gone, just `Open`
I actually wanted to support osmand financially, only at the time the only way I could find to do so was through the play store, which I didn't want to use.
I've tried the simple apps and they are ok, but there are so many good alternatives on fdroid they don't stand out in any way.
If you get Amazon digital credit, e.g. from a "prime day delivery", you can use the fire store to donate that money to Osmand or whatever other app of preference.
Usually the default GrapheneOS/AOSP apps are good enough, but not the calendar. Also I never found a calendar I like better on F-Droid.
That's when I started getting notifications to get the pro version every once and a while, even though I had bought the thank you for $15. It would have been nice to get grandfathered. I was and still am thankful. They are great apps for me.
(If you're wondering how someone had so little money to spend/disposable income try being a kid in a third-world country.)
No other app works reliably while this app is rock solid for what it does.
I have attempted to give others a try but they had reduced functionality or bugs like dialer.
Calendar works kinda but gallery is rock solid.
1. In the beginning, these were completely free apps with no limitations (that I remember). 2. Then some features required a payment (if you were getting it from the play store apparently. I don't know about fdroid but I don't think that was advertised - and yes, apps like TaskbarX do advertise that they're free elsewhere.) 3. People called it (rightfully, in my opinion) akin to a bait-and-switch.
"But wait, you never paid anything! What's the problem?"
Well, if they were never offered under the guise of "Hey here's a foss app that's free!" - like ZorinOS - it might have been an easier pill to swallow. Some people including me paid for the "Thank You" version because we wanted to support a dev who was doing commendable work. But if you make it paid... that's kinda crappy.
Also (maybe?) see - OpenAI happily running away with money now that they can. Do you support that decision too?
(It's actually cross-platform and available also outside stores)