And that's where your disconnect comes in. You might value any proprietary products worthless, but clearly much more people don't see it that way. We have proprietary RSS readers and they get many users, there are many users of Apple products even when open-source OSes and desktops are available.

If this is a must-have, then your comments make sense. Until then, I think that let the users decide if they want it. You apparently don't, but are other people feeling the same way?

Mastodon itself isn't offering a paid option, this is a third party who's promising a more well-featured and supported application than any of the current free/OSS ones. If someone wants to copy those features into an OSS client, they're welcome to, but they haven't yet.

Its generally best to let the community speak on these sorts of issues, they can be quite opinionated (see "Quote Toots", and "Scraping")

Or use a different app. Here is a free and Open source one called Ice Cubes. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ice-cubes-for-mastodon/id64449...

This client was made by the company that makes Tweetbot, whose API keys have been retracted recently in one of Twitter's latest changes. They already had a paying audience despite the free nature of Twitter. It only makes sense that they try to get their business going again by targeting a Twitter alternative. Most of the work has already been done, after all.

Mastodon runs on servers. This isn't replacing Mastodon at all. One of the core strengths of the fediverse is the ability to get the client of your preference, self-made, open source, or paid.

I do think the app store labeling “Free. Offers in-app purchases” is dishonest. It should read, “Demoware. Requires in-app subscription.”

Personally, I used the Testflight version for the last month or so, and am happy to pay for this. YMMV.