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It seems the apps starting to enforce upgrades to pro in ~February of this year.

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...

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.

Data hostage? All of these apps feature easy and painless import/export of data to an open format.

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.

> It seems the apps starting to enforce upgrades to pro in ~February of this year.

Only when installed from Google playstore.

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

Unfortunately, the charge to my credit card would not be merely symbolic.

> 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's the same with OsmAnd

It's a decent model.

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.

Simple Calendar is great. It does everything I need and is simple to use.

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.

OsmAnd~ in F-Droid is the free build of OsmAnd+ from Google Play, IIRC.

I bought the Google Play version and can confirm it's not the same as the F-Droid one.

https://f-droid.org/en/packages/net.osmand.plus/

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`

that doesn't necessarily mean they are the same app, just that they are using the same name

What are the main differences?

> 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.)

Nothing wrong with that.

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.

> "open source but proprietary" model that's working for Barotrauma.

It's source available, not open source.

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)