The RedReader app has been given accessibility status by the graciousness of reddit and will not have to shut down. The dev is not particularly happy about how fellow devs were treated though and still plans on adding lemmy in future. Read the announcement here
One of the really positive things about this Reddit situation is that I’ve learned a lot about the community of passionate third party developers out there. I’ve never used Red Reader, but if he’s able to keep it going with Reddit, and slowly but surely introduce users to Lemmy within its UI, then that’s basically optimal. Half the battle of Lemmy is the sign up friction. If you can sign people up within their existing Reddit app, that’s ideal.
So the non-commercial thing means that the dev can’t show ads and add donations to his app? That’s really scummy, they would have to work on the app without any contribution, maybe people could support him elsewhere but idk.
From what I understand, even paid use of the API prohibits 3rd party ads under the new terms. So that $20M/year they wanted to charge Apollo? Yeah it also meant /u/iamthatis couldn’t serve ads on top of that.
I suspect support will be axed eventually - chances are many people will flock to these exempt apps to still get their 3rd party client fix, and that will put them on the radar for Reddit to find a way to justify pulling the rug out under them too (e.g. “Our app is now accessible!”).
It’s a shame that Reddit went like this.
Don’t blame them, probably feel massive survivor’s guilt. In some ways Reddit burned them the most. Reddit cut everyone else out and specifically left these two apps.
These appdevs probably feel guilty for still being involved, mad that they were singled out, glad that they can still serve their users, anxious about the eventual hammer falling for them too - just to name a few
Major kudos to them for adding support for Lemmy. That was brave of them to say “Yeah thanks for keeping us on, I guess, but we’re going to move our userbase off your platform over time”
I can totally understand that the main dev behind RedReader isn’t particularly happy about, especially because he “was graced” by an exception.
In hindsight, this whole situation reminds me of Tweetbot. Being completely dependent on 1 provider for your app. Not sure, if that was a smart move. But hindsight is always 20/20.
Yeah, this has served as a massive wake-up call to a lot of talented devs. It will ultimately result in more talent choosing to focus on the “alternatives,” which is good. It’s too bad its happening this way, but the process was never going to be pleasant.
If you build your app against a major corporation, they are just a bad earnings call away from destroying your entire world. A lesson I was hoping that Reddit wouldn’t be the one to make, but here we are I guess.
Build against open source, every time. Closed source will throw you away
