Don't get me wrong, bringing more visibility to the platform will always be good, but wanting to jump ship from e.g. Jerboa to a port of one of those proprietary apps (Boost, Sync, etc.) kinda defeats the point of using an open platform in the first place.

I fully believe that each app developer should get their work recognized and make their apps paid if they wanted, I'm sure many will be inclined to buy them from the store still because of the convenience and/or wanting to support the developer.

But I think alongside the API conversion there should also be a shift in the development paradigm that follows up on the culture of the whole platform, Lemmy is free (as in freedom I mean) software, most of the Fediverse is, of course no one forces you to make your client free too, but the developers should feel encouraged to embrace that way of working and in turn users should be attracted to options that were made so, that will also foster powerful growth of the platform when everyone can examine, learn and contribute since clients play a crucial part in the interaction with the service