It's weird that you guys cannot seem to comprehend the idea of devs being paid for their work. Free stuff is great. I put my own shit online for free but you know something I don't do? Maintain an app with 100k+ downloads. Maybe the guy deserves to make some money off his hard work...

Those free Lemmy apps cost time and effort to create and maintain; if people want to give their stuff away for free, that's their business. In any case, I tried those other apps, and I didn't like them (likely because they've put hobbyist levels of effort into them rather than a paid-worker's amount). And because they're free, I would never dream of asking for more features (which is tantamount to saying, "Yo, dev. Give me more free shit!").

Besides, we're talking about a few dollars to support a single dev. Not like Ruben has teams of people working for him in some faceless megacorp making billions of dollars.

Boost has the features I like with the layout I like, and I paid a few dollars mainly as a tip to the dev, which just happens to come with the added benefit of no ads.

Im sure for many it is to support a developer who remains dedicated and has built rapport with their users.

It's why I bought Sync Pro (twice), and Synfonium, despite there being plenty of FLOSS alternatives.