Given the lack of FOSS email clients for android (except for K9, which does not see much development lately), I wanted to give Fair Email a try.
This is an email client app which appeared recently on fdroid and claims to be 100% open source and GPL compliant.
But, after installing it, I was quite disappointed when I discovered that some of the features require unlocking through a payment to the developer.
I am not sure that this is, legally speaking, against the license. If the “pro” features are in the source code, one could get it, disable the licence check and recompile it, or even fork it and publish fully free version of the app.
But I cannot hide my disappointment in seeing such “pay-to-unlock” fuss in a self proclaimed FOSS app. Just imagine if the same applied to linux kernel: pay to unlock a kernel module, or recompile it yourself if you have time and will…
What do you think about this topic? Is there any fdroid policy about this?