I’ve only purchased like 3 apps in like 15 years. Every now and then I donate to an open source project. I used to pay for Office, Adobe Cloud, Sony Vegas way back in the day. What happened was the free and open source became far beyond capable than my technical ability and if I needed pay software, it was for work at a company that purchased licenses themselves. It was fast forward in mobile apps. There was already 20 years of open source desktop software being adapted to mobile even if less limited it covered what I and many people would want to do with a mobile device was quickly covered.
Now it’s a matter of getting people to stumble on your software first and get them to pay before they learn of any of the truly free stuff. Cloud services where storage/processing is fully off your device and way better in ways are what can’t be fully replicated as a free service for people. A NAS can work out to be cheaper for storage but way less functional and more hassle for most people
I’ve only purchased like 3 apps in like 15 years. Every now and then I donate to an open source project. I used to pay for Office, Adobe Cloud, Sony Vegas way back in the day. What happened was the free and open source became far beyond capable than my technical ability and if I needed pay software, it was for work at a company that purchased licenses themselves. It was fast forward in mobile apps. There was already 20 years of open source desktop software being adapted to mobile even if less limited it covered what I and many people would want to do with a mobile device was quickly covered.
Now it’s a matter of getting people to stumble on your software first and get them to pay before they learn of any of the truly free stuff. Cloud services where storage/processing is fully off your device and way better in ways are what can’t be fully replicated as a free service for people. A NAS can work out to be cheaper for storage but way less functional and more hassle for most people