I have it installed, and while it's handy for opening Sketch files if you don't have a subscription, basic things like text handling and typography are rough. It's useful, but I wouldn't try and actually design in it.

Founder here.

You have correct observations and ask the right questions.

1. We do promote our content. It's not enough to support the development. 2. We could afford a generous freemium. Unlike Figma, Lunacy is resource-efficient and has no pressure from investors. 3. However, collaboration requires cloud, so we'll charge for cloud storage.

TLDR Lunacy will be a highly generous freemium.

Might be worth pointing out that this is thanks to Sketch publishing specs[0] for their format, making it easy to write importers/exporters for. As far as I know Figma has yet to do this, so anything that reads Figma files is likely reverse engineered and prone to breakage when Figma inevitably changes their undocumented format.

If I were searching for a Figma alternative, its file format being documented would be a priority because otherwise, one is subjecting themselves to some degree of lock-in.

[0]: https://developer.sketch.com/file-format/