Sure you could. I'm not, I don't think its in the spirit of local first. And I wouldn't pay money for that, but if you or someone else wants to build that kind of software - its a free world :)

It’s easy to say you wouldn’t do that, but if it gets to the point where you have an employee helping you out and in a downturn you have to choose between laying them off or pushing an ad to keep paying them one more quarter, you might reconsider.

No, ads aren't the solution for everything, and in my opinion anything.

You will reconsider this argument when you start publishing your own ads to make people aware of your software.

there are different kinds of ads, but lets be clear that even a Show HN is a form of ad. Some forms of ads are just more appreciated than others.

> You can find tons of purely local apps tha[t] monetize themselves with a[d]s.

How do they do that without hitting the internet?

It's "local first", not "local only".

Sorry, a "purely local app" isn't "local only"?

You can hardcode ads into each build that don't need Internet access.

Well if you're gonna get all accurate on me...

Not OP, but no.

IMHO, a fully local app is an app that can run locally with all the functionality, not that it's isolated from everything else.

Browser, email client (running locally on your device such as Mail.app, mutt, Outlook,...), Zed (text editor, runs locally but can check for updates... as can many other modern apps)...

Point 3 from the article is

>3. The network is optional

Ad SDKs usually allow caching ads for a period of time so that ads can still be shown while the device is temporarily offline.

i could be wrong but I think they're referring to the winrar model, where there are occasional "annoyances" that you can either ignore or pay to get rid of.