The in-app purchases are a dealbreaker. Not only is there no reason for it, but it necessitates the integration of Google Play Services.
If the goal was to be privacy-centric, it already fails at that for this alone.
And if the goal was to profit off of women's need for privacy-centric period tracking, then there is absolutely no reason not to find a proper FOSS alternative that cares about its users more than making passive income for the developer.
It's unfair to expect someone to work for free. In-app purchases are a common and reasonable way for programmers to sustain themselves while providing a valuable service to users. After all, programmers, like everyone else, need to make a living.
GP did not say they expecting someone to work for free. They took issue with the payment method and explained why.
If the app required payment by giving your name, address, credit card, and more to "Jimmy" (some person you don't know and don't trust) who will be contacting you to collect, and somebody said "I don't know Jimmy and I don't really trust this. I'd prefer to use a trusted method of payment" would you reply, "You just don't want people to make a living!" I would really hope not.
An in-app purchase is an automatic dealbreaker? Doesn’t that depend on what it actually is?
It could be an in-app purchase for themes or something like that. It can be a “thanks for supporting the app” cosmetic badge, completely optional, just there to buy a coffee for the author. But you’re dealbreaking it before you even see it?
In-app purchase != data collection
Also, regarding FOSS alternatives, you should know that FOSS does not mean “free from payment.” It technically doesn’t even mean “free from data collection.” It just means that the source code is available under a free and open source license. FOSS isn’t necessarily “free as in beer” and the FSF explicitly defines it that way. It’s more important that you’re offered the freedoms of the open source license and ability to get the source code. Whether or not you pay is a separate issue entirely.
Damn, that's quite the lecture. Where did GP say that FOSS means free of payment? I only see criticism of the payment method (along with justification), not the need for payment. There are other ways of collecting payment than using Google Play Services. Plenty of apps that are open source are not free-as-in-beer (as you pointed out). OP could keep a Play Store version with in-app payments for users who don't care, but also release an F-Droid open source version that takes payments through Stripe or some other alternative. This would be approximately 10x better anyway due to "commission."
Are you responding to the right comment? What you’re saying seems completely unrelated to what I was responding to RIMR about.
If your issue with this app being posted to HN is the mere existence of the app on the Play Store (including all of the store and the OS’ existing flaws), I don’t see how that’s supposed to be a constructive or useful discussion relevant to this app.
If paying for something deanonymizes me, as a Google Play purchase would, then it isn't fulfilling the privacy part of the deal at all.
More importantly, if privacy centric apps raise the barrier for entry to include licensing fees, then most people are going to choose the "free" alternatives that get paid for by selling their metadata. If you actually care about protecting users' privacy, you should avoid gatekeeping the technology behind a paywall.
There are plenty of Free (as in beer + as in freedom) period trackers out there that I would be happy to donate time and money to help develop. The closed-source for-profit version that demands that I disclose my identity to Google before I get started is dead-in-the water, having failed to be suitable for any purpose than making the developer a bit of cash while pretending to care about women's privacy in a world that wants to imprison them for a miscarriage.
If the goal was to be privacy-centric, it already fails at that for this alone.
And if the goal was to profit off of women's need for privacy-centric period tracking, then there is absolutely no reason not to find a proper FOSS alternative that cares about its users more than making passive income for the developer.