this post was submitted on 29 Mar 2022
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Mastodon
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These apps are being developed specifically as means of onboarding new users to mastodon from the app store ecosystem's "foot traffic". It makes sense for them to want a limited pool of users for beta to ensure the apps are well polished before the intended audience of less technically inclined people unfamiliar with mastodon use them. How you obtain the pool of beta testers is probably not overly important, using an invite system for example would probably result in largely the same group of insiders who are likely to be patreon supporters having access anyway.
Yeah but you are imagining their motives and predicating their future actions on the products of your imagination.
None of that is happening for any of those reasons. This makes any outcomes you anticipate, well, I'll be kind and leave it at 'unlikely'.
My post is in fact based directly on the Mastodon developer's public statements to this effect
oK, I will cheerfully admit that you weren't imagining things; that said, I think the masto devs have generally made at least the appearance of evil here, which is potentially as bad as just plain old evil.
Limiting access to FOSS is bad. Everyone involved in FOSS knows that. If they were going to do something like this, they could have at least kept it between themselves and their beta testers, and not made a point of telling everyone they had to be a patreon supporter to get access. Do they have an interest in the success of patreon? if not, what then is their motivation in using a selection metric so directly associated with their cash flow? At some point, they must understand that a donation is made voluntarily, and if you require a donation, now or previously - your software or service is simply not free, and you have been made to pay for it, and that payment is not a donation but a charge.
For the record, I'm not overly invested in your opinion of me. I'm simply sharing my views. I respect your right to differ with me ;)