and I believe that the versions on F-Droid are the paid versions, so you can just install it from there for free instead of Google Play

Unfortunately, the vast majority of users don't want to spend a dime on any digital good ever. In fact, they are very offended when asked to pay and will gladly leave 1 star reviews thinking that they are defending their interests. They won't admit to it but they are instead paying with their privacy and attention. This is the reason we have tech monopolies financed by marketing and user data for sale on the dark net. And the worst bit of it all is that the current state of affairs is hopelessly irreversible

I am considering open sourcing all my work and giving it out for free out of despair (I refuse to monetize user attention/data even though that is what the "market" wants you to do)

You are absolutely right. Every HN thread about a consumer product that is paid is full of why it is bad, or why people would gladly pay if it had 10 more orthogonal features, or they have a better way to support the creator, or the product doesn't deserve payment for some random reason but it is OK to use it without compensating the creator.

The irony is a good % of HN is well paid due to information related jobs. And their work is valued only due to artificial scarcity of information.

> Unfortunately, the vast majority of users don't want to spend a dime on any digital good ever.

The subscriber count for Netflix, Disney+, Spotify, etc. easily disproves this. Please, while making a good argument, try not to include grandiose overstatements that discredit your entire position for no good reason.

Subscriber count is not telling of what the "vast majority" is doing. Subscriptions to quasi-gate-keepers also can't be compared to "street market" one-time purchases

I personally don't consider what my direct experience will be, but instead the total sum of the collective experience all users will have. I want to support something everyone benefits from, not myself. Consequently, I don't want to support anything that doesn't trend the community toward my ideals.

As an example, the Mastodon project and mastodon.social are run by a non-profit. They have their own mastodon account which discusses updates, advertises merchandise to support them, and could ask for sponsors or donations if needed. Users can subscribe to their feed if they want, and support them should they need help, while users who don't want advertisements won't be affected. I'm confident in the stability of this model for them so I chose to make my Mastodon account on their instance so I can trust I won't have to transfer to another someday should one shut down.

I'm hoping the digital space evolves in this direction and we approach a post-advertisement economy.

Otherwise, enshittification keeps ruining things and we can't rely on the long-term stability of anything. Just look at Google.