Yup that is a real rough pill to swallow when the default is free AND no ads. If I'm going to drop money on lemmy I'd rather just donate to whoever is hosting my instance.
I hear what you (and everyone else) is saying, but the developer needs to make money somehow or they'll have to go get a regular job, and then who will develop?
I think what I'm saying is, how else is the Dev meant to feed his face?
I miss the days when I could just drop a couple of dollars on the paid version, stops the ads and works forever, subscriptions turn me off.
And, I'm not the dev of it. He needs to convince the people. Here, he has multiple possibilities that he can explore before finding how to attract users.
I tried multiple Reddit apps before I settled on Sync. I went through a phase of trying a different one every week. They were all free versions with a paid version. I paid for the ones I liked.
That's all I wanna do, buy it once, no subscription.