Nearly every day, my kids come home from school and go on about some new app or game they and their mates are excited about.
  • 0x0@programming.devEnglish
    0·
    1 month ago

    Couldn’t be arsed to read this, fed the link into an LMM and asked to summarize. This is the result:

    Dave Lane’s blog post, “Why ‘free’ proprietary software will always end in tears,” discusses the pitfalls of using proprietary software that is offered for free. He shares a personal story about a scouting group’s experience with a poorly implemented proprietary system and explains how such software often becomes a critical dependency for organizations. This dependency can lead to issues when the software’s limitations or costs become apparent. Lane argues that proprietary software, even when free, often leads to negative outcomes due to its restrictive nature and the control exerted by its developers

    • Ace@feddit.ukEnglish
      0·
      1 month ago

      between the effort of doing this and then adding the comment, this was more effort than just reading the article yourself…

    • yesman@lemmy.worldEnglish
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      1 month ago

      This is bad. Lane’s argument is that freemium software is tore up from the floor up. You’d get the impression reading this summery that he was just bitching about one program his Boy Scout troop used.

    • Moobythegoldensock@lemm.eeEnglish
      0·
      1 month ago

      LLM completely whiffed on this one:

      • It’s not a poorly implemented app. It’s a well-implemented app that in the early stages is not monetized
      • The issue is not that limitations and costs are becoming apparent. The issue is that after the honeymoon period ends, developers seeking return on investment start locking features critical for business behind a paywall, and charge a very high premium fee for services that used to be free.
      • It’s not the restrictive nature of freemium software that becomes the issue. It’s the increasing enshittification of platforms to squeeze business customers for as much as they can before the platform collapses, betting on the established dependency making it too costly to switch to another platform.
  • helenslunch@feddit.nlEnglish
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    1 month ago

    I was able to talk my org into leaving Meetup for the same reasons. It’s just progressively getting worse, advertising to our users while simultaneously raising fees. Removing the ability to sync calendars. They also won’t give us the email addresses of any of our users unless we upgrade to “pro” (for an additional fee, of course), and even then, only the ones who RSVP to our events.

  • M600@lemmy.worldEnglish
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    1 month ago

    There was an iOS app I used like this that did a great job of scanning text books.

    After I used it for about 6 months this exact thing happened. Started charging fees for many different things.

    Exporting images as pdf had a charge, then scanning to make the text searchable had a fee.

    I just exported as jpg and used imagic and ocrmypdf to take care of this.

    Then I learned that iOS has a built in scanner in the files app, so I just switched to that one.

    • ddh@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
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      1 month ago

      Yep, one free and one paid app I have used for a while recently moved previously entitled functionality behind subscription paywalls. Serves me right. Will stick to libre apps from here and suffer that way instead.

      • M600@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        1 month ago

        The app was really good and I’d be willing to pay for it, but not a subscription just to use features that are already in the app.

        Additionally, it’s a scanner app, who scans enough to subscribe to a scanner app but doesn’t scan enough to not just buy a scanner?