I just discovered F-Droid last night, and I love it. I love dabbling in open-source software, and I love people who are willing to use it to make the lives of their communities better.
I have a question about the completely-free nature of F-Droid. I bought my favorite calendar app, Simple Calendar Pro, on the Google Play Store a while back. Through the F-Droid client, the same app – the Pro version – is available for free. Is this a decision that the developer of the app made, i.e., the developer knows that’s it’s being hosted for free on F-Droid? I just want to make sure that I’m not ripping anyone off getting something for free here when the same app is a paid app on the Google Play Store (and I have absolutely no problem donating for free apps that I use on a daily basis).
Thank you for helping me understand the F-Droid mission, and please excuse my new-user ignorance.
Yes, that’s one of the conditions, that being said, imagine an open source app named “MyCourses” and the developer does not want it here, one can just fork it (it’s open source, right?) and submit “LOLcourse” to F-Droid…
It’s a pretty common model to fund open-source projects by having a paid version. DavX5 (formerly DavDroid) and OsmAnd do the same. Developers have to eat, after all
All of your Simple Mobile Tools are free in F-Droid, while in Google Play there are fee-based versions of some apps. Are the apps in F-Droid still up to date?
If there is a fee-based version of an app, I update only that version in Google Play. The former free versions are still in Google Play, but I don’t update them any longer. As mentioned before, some of my apps don’t have a fee-based version at all.
All of my apps, even those that cost money in Google Play, are available for free in the app store F-Droid. I decided to give them all to F-Droid because it is a service which really aligns with the values of my apps.
There are multiple ways people can donate to my project. I get many emails and payments, mentioning that they downloaded the apps from F-droid.
