Conversations Leaves Google Play and Costs Nothing Now
Daniel Gultsch's Conversations is now free and off Google Play, ending the store income that had paid his rent since 2014.
Daniel Gultsch has pulled Conversations, his federated messaging client for Android, from the store that paid his rent. The app is free now, twelve and a half years after its March 24, 2014 release. He started it in a student dormitory in January 2014, kept the source public, and charged for the compiled binary — unusual then.
Related work has been his primary income since 2014. Companies paid for development; some features went upstream, some were too specific to their workflows to merge. Server setup and security consulting filled gaps. Grants and funded projects mattered more later. Only the store stayed steady: “I used to say that it pays my rent.”
That is the fine print of selling a binary: the code was free to anyone willing to build it; the checkout turned strangers into rent money. Free helps users and does not pay the maintainer, and I care more about that second half. A store listing paid his rent. If you run Conversations, send him money outside a store.