I’m not sure how I feel about this. The Ice Cubes Mastodon app is a really nice implementation of a SwiftUI application for a large social network.
It’s all open source, created, and mostly maintained by an individual: Thomas Ricouard.
Part of me says “Yes! Go for it! This will help keep the app going!” but another part of me says “Heck no! They’re taking advantage of your kindness by offering to support just the code bits, not reimburse you for your time, and try to make money off of it! What happens if the effort to monetize it fails? Does the code live on without an owner?”
Now, I suppose since it’s open source software anyone could fork it and use it to build their own version at any time.
I think the thing that bothers me personally is no offer to throw some cash at Mr. Ricouard for all the time he dedicated to this project.
I say pay Mr. Ricouard for his creation, move “ownership” to a Medium backed repository, and allow Mr. Ricouard to continue his fine work.
Monetizing it seems weird to me. I suppose you could sell a subscription through IAP that also gives the subscriber a Medium account? But to do that you’d need to offer more of a carrot for subscribers. Perhaps the continued offer of a me.dm account plus some other special offer would do it? Tricky.
In the end I suppose it all boils down to what Mr. Ricouard would like to do.