My app Arctic falls into the free, closed source, privacy respecting category. I see what your going for as far as a direction for the community, but it is limiting for apps such as mine. Just because software is free, and doesn’t track its users does not necessarily mean it needs to be open source. Closed source software also does not equate to being nefarious or tracking users.
I’m a big fan of FOSS, and am working towards open sourcing components of Arctic, but I haven’t decided whether I want to fully open source the project.
What I’d prefer to see is requirements for post formatting. So all submissions need to include information about the client
- pricing (free) (paid) (freemium) (IAP)
- source (closed-source) (open-source)
- tracking (ads) (crashlitics) (anonymous) (etc)
- platforms (web) (windows) (linux) (iOS) (android) (cross)
I’m a fan of this community because it is the only one I’ve found that is targeted specifically at providing information about lemmy clients, and with the proposed changes, I see that information becoming more fragmented. I’d rather see changes along the lines of what I suggested, or similar, and then maybe a new community could be born (FOSSLemmyApps) which could be advertised in a stickied post here, and included in the sidebar.
Ultimately, it is up to you as the moderator, but I do hope you’ll consider feedback from the existing subscribers. Perhaps an open discussion, or a poll would be good for getting feedback about the proposed changes.
I’m not sure about Avelon specifically, but I am the developer of Arctic and since I’ve seen several posts about this issue in several clients with no developer responses, I thought I would chime in.
Most clients (mine included) rely heavily on opengraph metadata for generating link previews, and presenting in-line content. This includes information like titles, descriptions, direct image/video links, etc. RedGifs serves opengraph data on all of their webpages and this is how (i’d assume) most clients retrieve the video link for displaying the media in-app.
Well recently (in the last few weeks) RedGifs made some changes. They still serve all the same metadata, however the video link they provide will not load unless accessed via their API. Well this is kind of silly, why provide the link if it cannot be used. Anyway, due to these changes, I decided to apply for a client key for their API. They do have some restrictions as to what type of clients can use their API, but Lemmy apps on apple/google storefronts should fit their guidelines. However it has been several weeks since I applied for the API key, and I have received no response. I’m not sure if other clients have had similar issues or not, but I though I’d share my own experience with attempting to resolve this in my client.