Hacker News Reader

Comment by SECProto | Hacker News Reader

FBReader was my go-to eReader app for a long time, but in the last few years (since they went closed source) they haven't added any useful (-to-me) features, but have added several advertisements (in the form of popups and in the menu). Still looking for an alternative

View on HN

That's a legitimate complaint. I just paid the money to go premium to remove ads. I've been using it to read books since my Nokia 770 and it has everything I need from an ebook reader so I'm reluctant to change.

There's a fork of FBReader on F-Droid called simply 'Book Reader' which is being actively developed (last release 2019-02-08.) Might be worth trying out.

Git repo is here: https://gitlab.com/axet/android-book-reader

Book Reader is the app that finally made it possible for me to read books on my phone. It has nice shortcuts for full screen, screen brightness and navigation, is intuitive, and simply works.

It is being sold for what, $5 and is actively being supported. I assume that it's being developed by a single developer in their own time. If charging for it lets them make a living from their clearly valuable work then what's the problem?

Working on open source is fantastic but most realistic projects are sponsored in some way or form. I doubt that sponsorship works works for an eReader app, so this is a good solution.

TLDR; our fellow developer deserves to get paid for their clearly awesome work.

> our fellow developer deserves to get paid for their clearly awesome work

I agree, but it highlights the many-small-cuts problem

$5 for an eReader, then a mapping app, file manager, photo editor, mail client... the list of developers deserving support is longer than most people can afford. Eventually a choice has to be made to prioritise. For many people that will mean that a less-used category of app can be fulfilled from F-Droid instead of paying for a more-polished one.

Is it really that great? How many apps do we use in our day to day life? Let's say 20 apps that we use regularly.

Is $100 too much for lifetime access to these apps?

Lifetime is very misleading. I expect smartphones and apps to become obsolete over the next 40 years. Just like pretty much everything software from 40 years ago is obsolete now.

Lifetime in software assumes the lifetime of the app, not the user.

Wait, so there's say 20 apps someone uses, maybe average $5/each, that's $100 for apps on a device you might pay $800+ for? Doesn't seem that ridiculous....

> If charging for it lets them make a living from their clearly valuable work then what's the problem?

They took an open source app I loved, closed the source, added features I don't need (and ads I definitely don't), making it run slower on my 6-year-old Nexus 7 I use as a reader.

I agree with supporting development, but it was feature-complete as an open source app. The roadmap for 3.0, 3.1, and 3.x add nothing of interest to me[1]. I'll happily move to the Book Reader app that someone else mentioned, and contribute anything to it that I can.

[1] https://fbreader.org/content/fbreader-3x-android-planned-fea...

Give BookFusion a try. You will be able to read and sync your eBooks, highlights, comments and reading progress not only across Android but also iOS and Desktop via web.

More at https://www.bookfusion.com/reading/cloud-library

PS: Founder of BookFusion. Please let me know if you have any feedback

Reply on news.ycombinator.com