FR: Clear tagging of apps with locked features

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F-Droid allows apps that have premium features, requiring a payment to be unlocked.

Some apps don’t disclose this in their F-Droid description, and others do it inconspicuously.

This leads to a process where a user looking for a suitable application, might needlessly download and install apps, only to uninstall them shortly after.

This is a waste of resources: on the user’s end of energy, time and effort, and of bandwidth for F-Droid and users both.

This change would also bring the F-Droid experience more in line with what appears to me as the norm of the web, where user-oriented sites generally use conspicuous labels for software that require payments in part or entirely (e.g. Play Store, Amazon, Steam, etc)

My humble suggestion would be to add a badge near or under the application’s name, so that it’s immediately clear whether an app is completely free to use or not, removing the need to sift through the description or install the app to find out.

Since this has nothing to do with the application’s code being open-source or not, it probably needs not be classed as an anti-feature.

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I know of only a small handful of apps that require payment for features:

  • AFWall
  • FairEmail
  • My Expenses
  • NetGuard

All of them implement it in the most generous way possible where it is only a small handful of not necessary features that are locked away.

Heck some of these apps aren’t even free if you go on Google Play Store:

  • Conversations
  • OsmAnd
  • Privacy Browser
  • Termux

The following have paid defaults, but let you specify your own server:

  • Conversations
  • EteSync

Developers need to cover their expenses too!

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I avoided making any example because:

  1. This is not about any individual application or developer
  2. It can be perceived or construed as an attack on the specific application or developer

I would very much like for any l

And? This isn’t about F-Droid changing their stance on apps with paid features.

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I guess it could make sense to add a flag for that or at least ask developers to make it explicit in the description. (We already do something similar for apps that require root.)

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