Not hating on open source, just let people use what fits their expectations and needs and stop deterring them with gatekeeping :P
UX = user experience
This whole Sync "issue" (is not an issue for me) has brought to light the way many people in the Lemmy communities feel about FOSS, free apps, ads even privacy, developers' compensation, etc. It's been interesting, still paid those $20 tho.
I think one of the thing that irritated some people is that this time they are not paying for more, they are paying to remove a nuisance (tracking). This is something almost only seen in proprietary apps.
I've paid for a bunch of Foss and non-foss applications through the years but never for the "remove ads" model. JuiceSSH is one such example. The base app was so useful that I knew I had to get the additional functionalities and paid a fair amount for them.
i suppose i can purge the other apps on my phone now, voyager ftw though!
Nah. It's the ads and the steep cost to remove them that make it a bad choice.
Edit: here's another way to put it: Lemmy is an open-source platform run on independent instances. Your instance could use that $20 way more than Sync needs it.