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Comment by alwayslikethis | Hacker News Reader

Luckily, it's not like iOS and you can still download an APK or use F-Droid. My impression is that most people who are using these rather obscure communication methods would be able to find the app somewhere else.

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The developer relies on the income from Goolge Play Store to keep working on it though:

"I understand that most of my audience here on Mastodon is more ideology aligned with F-Droid but the app sales on Google Play store have contributed significantly to me working (almost) full time on #Conversations_im.

Without the revenue from Google Play I can’t afford this." -- https://gultsch.social/@daniel/111929678072451151

Pretty surprising that you can make money off of a free software app like this, I always thought almost nobody would actually pay for it on Google Play store.

I hope he can work it out with Google. Conversations is the best Android XMPP client I know of.

I'm using a fork but it is the best XMPP client out there. Even the ones on Linux are riddled with bugs and usability issues.

I heavily use Gajim and it works very well on Linux. I couldn't recall any problems I had recently.

Gajim, at least in Windows, has terrible to nonexistent support for (video) calls.

Indeed, I don't really do video calls. For audio calls I use my phone, since I can move around. Maybe the web client https://mov.im/ can do video calls on Windows?

Even on iOS, none of them have UI as good as Conversations' (Android).

I was using XMPP only for some notifications (through a small bot) and it was nice while on Android. But when I moved to iOS I just stopped using XMPP because I didn't want to use any of the available clients.

Kindly allow me to reply with profanity [1] to that statement. :-)

[1] https://profanity-im.github.io

I’m using the F-Droid version, but I bought it on Play.

The best method is to install the F-Droid version and donate directly to the developer. Google takes a 30% cut on Play purchases. In the case of Conversations, Daniel has an account on Liberapay: https://liberapay.com/iNPUTmice/

This definitely helps the developer but as they said (https://gultsch.social/@daniel/111930342452832163) they much prefer having Conversations being available to non-techy people than relying on the hardcore fans

oof that hurts more than the app removal, it also took away most of his income. Surely he can find a human being somewhere that can help appeal it? No HN googlers with contacts?

F-Droid is a mess too. Apart from the unclear organizational status at this point and the associated drama, they also are super keen on plastering "anti-features" on apps with very vague criteria and no grace period. Organic Maps was for example, first accused of ads whereas it just had clearly communicated referral links to hotels on Kayak, then somebody came up with an idea it promotes non-free network services (i.e. the goddamn map download CDN in an otherwise offline app)

Anti-feature warnings on F-Droid do not affect your ability to install an app in any way, they are just there to inform users. Also the assessment of Organic Maps seems correct to me?

So you're saying it did have ads as described?

Is it really "obscure"?

Maybe 'traditional' would be better suited.

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