This kind of gatekeeping and elitism is bad for Lemmy and for FOSS.
It makes this community a less welcoming place and leaves new folks with a bad first impression. Much better to be welcoming and let people learn/see the benefits of FOSS at their own pace.
I'd given up on lemmy because every so I had tried was unfinished and unpolished. I tried sync and finally felt like the user experience wasn't getting in the way of content.
I'd love to support foss, if a genuinely comparable experience existed.
I'm glad to say that sync has revived my interest in lemmy.
You should check out Thunder, even if you gave it a try at some point - it's super polished and it's gotten even better week after week. In my opinion it has the best compact mode of all the lemmy clients, as long as you don't mind swipe actions!
I was using Thunder last week until Sync's open beta got approved and the User Experience and the interface of Thunder is nowhere near Sync. It's a night and day difference, and a difference that would have made me use Lemmy less and less.
Not OP, but I've tried thunder. It's OK. Sync is light years above all other clients I've tried. (same with reddit as well) swipe actions? Sync is the king of swipe actions.
IMO FOSS has really great offerings when it comes to libraries or other highly technical code.
But something about either the community or incentive structure results in sub-par UI/UX. Obviously not a rule, but definitely a trend I've noticed.
Don't forget the community's reaction to comments like yours, why down vote him if he's stating the obvious? FOSS projects often focus so much on technical features because everyone wants to flex their code-fu, but nobody gives enough time to UI/UX. Just look at pretty much every Lemmy web frontend, fugly webpages with early 2000s look-and-feel, usually slow and/or buggy, and with little to no user feedback.
It's been one year of this conversation, but I just found it now.
Sync has also made me use Lemmy more often, but I was still missing a good web environment until recently when I started using photon. It is the best web experience I had using Lemmy and now I'm using as a progressive web app.
Photon repository here! Give it a star or start contributing to it.
This is why I unsubscribed from the Android community. I love Android, I use nothing but Linux at home and really appreciate open source software.
But the FOSS...enthusiasm is starting to border on zealotry. It's getting really unpleasant.
Try to tell the Linux users on here that you prefer to use Windows...
100% agree. Going “haha, aren’t I COOL for NOT using this one popular app or software!?” contributes absolutely nothing and actively makes the community uninviting. I’m all for FOSS, but if a closed-source app is better than the FOSS options, I ain’t gonna knock on anybody for using it.
Also why even use an app outside of accessibility reasons? Been using Kbin on a mobile browser and it’s been a pretty good experience.
I don't understand how promoting FOSS in favor of proprietary software is bad for FOSS?
This is not promoting FOSS. This is mocking closed-source/paid Lemmy clients.
I don't get the point of this.
Since when did Sync masquerade itself as FOSS?
Just use whatever you want. Isn't that why we're all here?
Is the Sync noise getting to you? Just ignore it. It's natural since the app just opened up and there were a significant amount of Reddit refugees that badly wanted their app back.
I think it's more the Lemmy userbase having different expectations than that of the Reddit userbase, with Lemmy being such a shift from Reddit.
I agree. SYNC will bring tons of reddit users to lemmy. I for one welcome that change.
Seems to me this has spawned a fair bit of discussion... Which is the actual reason we're all here.
Sync has gotten a lot of buzz (I don't understand why, even on Reddit, rif was always better anyway) and that's always going to bring out the people who don't agree, for one reason or another.
Don't mistake an opinion you don't share for anything beyond what it is. I could just as easily parrot your statement back: if you don't think this discussion is productive, just ignore it. There's plenty of other discussions to get involved with on Lemmy
Sync gained a big following because it had a core feature many many moons ago, when having constant cell service was much less common, it allowed you download and save hundreds of posts and all the comments while you were on wifi, so you could browse reddit offline, it did this automatically and in the background (based on your settings ) hence the name 'Sync'. This was a killer feature back in the day, at least for me. As that became less of a need, the app continued to change and add a lot of nice features, like lots of customizations, random NSFW, a very good OLED dark mode, etc, so there was no point in switching to something else.
My .02¢
Sync is just so much more polished and feature-rich than all of these already... It's exactly like how it was when it was for reddit, and it's just one dev! I don't mind at all paying for a fantastic app.
You guys are taking the justified corpo hate and extending it to talented individual devs just making a living.
FOSS isn't about "corpo hate". It's about freedom. There's a philosophy behind it. You can, of course, disagree with it, but I think you should know what you're disagreeing with.
If the users don't control the program, the program controls the users. With proprietary software, there is always some entity, the developer or “owner” of the program, that controls the program—and through it, exercises power over its users. A nonfree program is a yoke, an instrument of unjust power.
I'm talking about the community. A large part of the community absolutely is about gate-keeping and hating on corporations... and now devs too apparently.
I am disliking this sentiment. I am on the Fediverse because Sync's developer and many others were betrayed by Reddit and I wanted to show solidarity and to 'punish' Reddit by leaving. The Fediverse's values are admirable, but I do not share them all. I believe in supporting good projects, even some that are private if they don't pose a risk of destroying something bigger, and Sync is a good project that can be easily abandoned without consequences if something goes wrong.
Paid software absolutely has a place in the world. Evil companies producing evil software designed to build a monopoly and lock out FOSS apps do not. I don't think Sync falls into the latter and I'm happy they've made the choice to be able to eat.
If apps were girls:
I was always in love with Sync. But life happened and we had to go different ways for non-romantic reasons. Some fucker called Spez, long story...
Eventually I met Voyager and she was great. Any user would be lucky to have her. But Sync was always the one that got away. Everyday I looked at Voyager and thought she was awesome but I was always holding a candle for Sync. But Sync was gone and I had to move on. But I could never really move on.
But life happened again and Sync was coming back. I had committed to Voyager but, as great as she was, I always thought how she came short of Sync. Sync came back and she was as stunning as I remembered. I couldn't stay with Voyager. I'm sorry Voyager. You're an awesome girl but I was pretty much just using you since I couldn't have Sync.
I'm a user Voyager, I make no excuses. There, there...
go memmy <3
Memmy is literally the reason I opted into the fediverse, such a beautiful UX/UI in this app! It feels like a true successor to Apollo.
I say this as someone that uses FOSS day to day for work, I don't really give a shit if my Lemmy app is FOSS.
For me, Sync was Reddit. It's where 99% of my interaction with Reddit happened. I don't really give a shit about Lemmy or the fediverse either. I'm here because Sync is a seamless product that gave me the best interface.
Despite saying that I don't care about Lemmy or other distributed servers, Sync is basically that sync (lol) for me. Once I map my old subreddits on Lemmy, the experience doesn't change.
Thanks for letting me know that theres a Lemmy Version of Infinity :D
So many years wasted on reddit... only reason was that I liked infinity and it made my experience good...
Infinity for lemmy feels like rediscovering an old friend!
Infinity for lemmy is the way to go
Oh nooooooo someone made a familiar and easy to use app to help people get used to this new ecosystem that can only thrive if people actually show up and use it. What a real shame.
Are we really being this petty already?
Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but does Sync seriously charge to remove ads that they added to browsing Lemmy in the first place? I get charging for Reddit due to the API, but I have a hard time believing the app is that much better than the existing FOSS apps such that the privacy tradeoff with ad trackers and/or the monetary cost worth it for, well, anyone really. Seems kinda scummy and antithetical to the philosophy that drives much of the Fediverse to me, yet I see so many people defending it in a way that reminds me of the rhetoric used to defend Reddit. Seriously, am I just a crazy person?
I am so happy to finally have Sync again. Was always my most used app before the API death on Reddit. Always happy to support LJ.
for long i thought Voyager had performance issues but in fact it's my instance's fault
Instance hosted voyager webapp?
No love for Arctic? Def the best on iOS IMHO. Voyager is a close second.
I think that app didn't exist when I made this meme 7 months ago.
