Developers need to get paid. It can’t be all FOSS.
I pay often for FOSS software. I am not a Cryptomator user, but if they make it stable and reliable I will use as my main encryption software and at that point pay.
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Does anyone here speak English? I PAID, I PAID, I PAID…!!!
I’m more than happy to pay, as long as I don’t get mugged. If the way to monetize get change, it is a disgrace to screw the old customers. Old customers shouldn’t pay a penny more when these changes happen, not only because they joined the project basing their decision on a precise set of information, but because it is especially thanks to them that the project reached the current state.
Without early adopters - who report bugs and advertise the product - and without funding from people like me, the devs would be using Cryptomator for themselves.
It is now clear that Cryptomator is not FOSS in the Stallman sense of the word, but rather Freemium Open Source Software.
Dear gibbs,
for your pleasure I try to do this in my best English and my best British behavior
I don’t think you’re reacting (or behaving) appropriate accounting to the matter of your complaints.
The facts: You paid for an android app no more no less - now you’re complaining about getting a fully functional desktop app for the OS of your choice without a fee - the people you getting it from would appreciate a donation but don’t ask for it! Now they decided to honor their donators with an extra - the dark mode - as an extra, not a promised basic function …
And you? Crying out about a rip-off, a fraud - about the dark side won’t give you the dark mode for free
So from my point of view the dark mode is not a feature you don’t get because the company is an evil capitalist monster, you just don’t get it because its a gift for donators - like the Christmas Card you get from the trust you donated to or the shirt or decal you got for supporting you local charity … so please stop complaining and be happy to get a fully functional, open source and easy to use desktop app in addition to your Android app for free
sorry for any inconvenience my words may cause
@all: Stay healthy, stay alert, save the NHS or whatever health system it is wherever you are
your sincerely elastic
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Exactly my thought. Even I was a bit annoyed at first - but then I decided that I would save up for a donation key when I want the dark mode.
Considering that you’re getting the same functionality, if they ask you an additional one-time fee for dark mode, it isn’t a big deal for a cosmetic feature.
Sometimes we get frustrated for things we seriously want and that’s alright. You can save up and get it later. 
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I can’t stand and I don’t trust people or companies who change the way they monetize all the time, no matter whether their product is proprietary or open source. It’s a matter of trust: I don’t want to be blackmailed into an ecosystem.
Some of you keep talking about ‘a gift in exchange of a donation’. I don’t know who brainwashed you into this peculiar view of economics, but for me it’s plain to see that Cryptomator is literally selling the dark mode, a very basic and much requested usability feature.
On top of that, my willingness to pay a hefty price for the Android app was a sign of belief and encouragement far bigger than a $0.01 donation. The fact that I funded the company with a fixed price at an earlier stage of development / adoption proves that I do deserve gratitude more than a John Smith who chooses to donate a couple of cents today: John Smith knows that he gets the dark mode in exchange, instead I could only hope to get it one day into the then 100% free Windows client.
Thank you all for your input on this matter! We understand that finance is quite a sensitive topic and there is much confusion on what FOSS actually means.
To understand the concept, you should think of “free” as in “free speech,” not as in “free beer”.
About six years ago, when Sebastian started this project and I joined a year later, we wanted to make a great product that has a laser focus on a client-side encryption software for cloud storage services that can be used across all platforms and is easy-to-use. To be quite honest, it was “just another” project back then. You can still read about the initial motivation here: Open Cloud Encryptor
It was clear from the beginning that we wanted to achieve two things:
- The desktop version should be completely open-source.
- The encryption scheme has to be public and well-documented.
Of course, we also had to think about how to finance this project. Ideally, we wanted to work full-time on Cryptomator without being distracted by other work that had to be done to pay our rent. That’s how we came to this monetization strategy:
- Present the desktop version as a “pay what you want” app on our website.
- Make the iOS app open-core and sell it for a one-time fee on the App Store.
Basically, the donations and sales from our iOS app were our main and only income back then. It was a very high financial risk for us to also make the iOS app completely open-source because we didn’t know what the impact would’ve been in the App Store ecosystem. Our team grew and we had to be able to pay salaries and couldn’t afford the risk.
Years later, things have evolved. We were able to grow our team to work on and publish an Android app, to modularize our software components into open-source libraries, and to found a company that has the main focus to maintain and improve Cryptomator. The harsh reality is that we can’t do all that just by giving everything away for free and we now also felt the growing responsibility to make sure that Cryptomator runs reliable across many systems. And unfortunately it’s not enough to just rely on voluntary donations, even though these have been and still are crucial. We also felt that the old website made a wrong impression that you had to pay for the desktop version, even though you could’ve just entered “0”.
We have decided to enable the download on the website first and ask then for donations. That’s why we were forced to be more creative about our monetization strategy. We removed the “pay what you want” buttons from the front page and added a “donation” tab in the Cryptomator settings. I’d like to emphasize that we will not limit any functional features and the software will always remain fully usable free of charge. Yes, technically we’re selling the dark mode but we didn’t take dark mode away from an existing feature set, it was completely absent before the introduction of the donation key. Past donors were also eligible to request a donation key without paying again. We wanted to be very fair about that.
We haven’t changed the monetization strategy of the mobile apps. They are still available for a one-time fee and users weren’t forced to pay again even though they have used the app with free updates for many years. There is nothing much that we can do about transferring licenses across different ecosystems. Google Play and the App Store are two different platforms. And the desktop version is also on a completely different platform with a different license. I don’t understand why this is being seen as greedy.
We are very grateful for all the support over the years, not just in regards to donations but also for all the feedback from the community and contributions in many ways like code, translations, discussions, and extensive tests. Of course, we are still growing, figuring things out, and will make changes along the way but we are true to our nature that we don’t want to restrict core features behind arbitrary paywalls. In an ideal world, everything is free of charge and open-source, maybe we’ll get closer to that someday but we have to face the challenges of being a company as well.
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Projects regarding the archiving of personal data require long-term stability for inherent reasons. The user who discovers a new project of this nature will ask himself two questions: do I believe in this project? Will it last long enough for me to trust it with my data, to invest my time in learning how to use it and to actually execute the workflows that it requires to work properly?
Because of this, the legal/financial matters of archiving-related products are like the Ten Commandments: once they are sorted out and written down they can’t be changed or expanded.
You clearly have a lot of confusion about FOSS software, because you somehow believe that it is enough to open your code to be compliant. Well, let me tell you what libre software is also about.
Yesterday you were selling just the Andoird app at a fixed price, and I agreed to pay it. Today you offer the dark mode as a ‘gift’ in exchange of a ‘donation’. Judging by the chunk of company history that I have witnessed and that you have just confirmed - tomorrow you will come up with another idea to monetize, and you will likely choose another basic feature to go with it.
Imagine that today I agree to donate because I need the dark mode (I really do), and that tomorrow I will find out that this other useful feature of yours requires yet another payment: at that point I will realize that I have renounced to my freedom, because all the past investments that I have made to support your product now implicitly force me to stick with it.
That’s where you betray the libre philosophy, my dear Tobi! You surely write good code and you keep it open, but your company doesn’t give a damn about users rights in this long-term relationship with them, and this is ethically evil.
Cryptomator is now a freemium open source software, but never a Free and Open Source Software in the sense of Stallman’s philosophy.
Your long and contradictory reply suggests a thinly concealed unwillingness to change idea on the issue we debated upon, and it looks to me that you have taken a long-awaited chance to show the door to some of the people who once believed in you.
Well, I accept your invitation to get back in control of my basic rights and my data, so I salute you and I promise that I won’t look back. We have enough basic-plus-pro-enterprise horrorshows in this world. I hope that you will make good use of the money that I gave you.
So long!
I’m very grateful, that Cryptomator is around. I appreciate, that I don’t have to pay every month. So for me the new update and the possibility of a “donation key” was a welcome reminder, that I can’t expect further development of this great software without “donating” every once in a while - whatever you want to call that.
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I think one cannot say “no development”. Maybe it will be slower, but since Cryptomator is open source there is always the possiblilty that other people can fork the project to push the development again.
There is the well-known proverb “Money makes the world go round”. In the context of open source this is not entirely true, it should be worded “Money makes the world go round faster.” 
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here are my 5 cents…
Beside of definitions of “open source” etc.
What really counts for me is the value of the product and the possibility to use it on multiple platforms. I am a long time user and and I dont remember how much I paid some years ago. But I am sure it was a small amount in relation to the value it has for me especially for the long using.
Now this feature is a reminder to honor the team and the product. Therefore I was happy to donate and show my gratitude.
The “open source” thing in my oppinion is not about the 0 dollar payment but to show there are not any hidden secrets and in my eyes this is an additional value which should certainly not reduce the payment.
Best regards, Thomas
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I was happy to pay a small contribution for the dark mode even though I don’t even use it. It reminded me that I had never donated to you for your excellent product, as far as I can remember. I try to support open source software with the walk, not just the talk.
I recently started using cyberduck/mountainduck which has cryptomator built-in which make the tool even more useful to me since I can create vaults in the cloud that don’t even take space on my hard disk. Thanks and keep up the good work!
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Slightly dated conversation but still relevant now the Android version has been open-sourced.
Will the Google Play version become free, with an optional donation license? Or will it be only free if you build it yourself from source (github)?
See my post in this topic:
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This makes sense. Make it paid so that it helps develop the app.
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First off I’ll say I am someone interested in dark mode and do desire it. I am light sensitive, so I always go for dark modes. So with that bias in mind, I’ll look at your use of terminology here.
Dark mode on desktop requires a donation to get a license key. But when ever someone does this to get a “donation” key, it is no longer classified as a donation. Looking at wikipedia:
Donations are given without return consideration. This lack of return consideration means that, in common law, an agreement to make a donation is an “imperfect contract void for want of consideration.”[5] Only when the donation is actually made does it acquire legal status as a transfer or property.[6]
What you are actually doing is selling a license. And at no small price either, and each platform has it’s own sperate license you need to purchase. The “Donation” License you sell for desktop is the worst of them all. Were I am, to purchase the android version is $15 after currency conversion, to get the desktop one will cost me approximately $25, almost double the android one for just the dark mode.
Even on your own site you sell the android license for $9.99€, $5€ less than your minimum required donation.
My recommendation is to start with at least calling it what it is. And that’s not a donation. You are selling a license for the desktop version by the legal definitions.
I do understand that you need financial income, but the choice of wording has made me very uncomfortable. I haven’t purchased the android version. I have downloaded the desktop program. And with the interface being bright I instantly looked for a dark mode and found out about the licensing stuff. The end result is I just closed it and haven’t tried it out, I don’t feel comfortable with it.
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This is not true. Once you have a donation key, you can use it for all your Desktop platforms. There are no restrictions to the used platform or the number of usages.
By platform I was referring to operating systems. Though by your wording I’d guess you are using the same “donation” license to activate the macOS and Linux desktop clients. But that in itself is still a restriction, the license is for the desktop versions. I was hoping that it would be usable for all clients, but that didn’t seem to be the case from what I could see.
This still leaves three separate Licenses. Desktop, Android and IOS. The Desktop license covering three OS’s might be a point for it costing more, though I’d counterpoint that a major portion of your userbase might prefer a cheaper option to have it just for their platform. Given the targeted audience I could still see a few using two different OS’s, fewer still three.
Something that would get some attention from me at least would be a license that covers all clients. That would be nice, and people could get that and know they are set no matter what.
In any case though I think the donation terminology does need to be looked at. I know I am only one data point in the grand scheme of things, but I think it would be extremely beneficial.
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This is correct. And even reflected in the choice you have to make on our website: Either buy a key or donate without retrieving a key.
While the process does make this distinction, you are right that the name of the key doesn’t reflect this. Thank you for your feedback, we will discuss our options here.
Your individual situation regarding light sensitivity is yet another point we should consider.
I can’t really follow your point here. How does currency conversion increase the price? We even lose revenue, if people pay 15 USD instead of 15 EUR due to the weaker currency.
That is technically impossible, unless we force you to create an account you need to log into. Without accounts, the App Store and Play Store are unaware of the fact that you already purchased a license elsewhere.
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First off I’d just like to say thank you for the response. You’ve touched on every point I was discussing.
Might I suggest calling it a “Supporter Key”? It’s a word that seems like it could fit much better.
I will admit it’s mild at least, but it does cause some discomfort. It’d take some work, but maybe you could add custom theming? That way the light and dark modes can be available to all, and then those with a key can choose custom colors for the app.
Sorry, bringing up the currency conversion distracted away from the point I was trying to make. What I was trying to say was that the minimum price being asked for to get dark mode on the desktop is more than that cost of buying the mobile version, which gets you the entire app. The balance of cost vs features seems out.
Actually it is technically possible, you guys already have a option for android to enter a license key here. But there is an issue from the store side when it comes to them wanting their cut. Android is easy with the fact you could offer to license version on F-Droid. IOS though has no option though… The stores might overlook it if used to unlock more than just the client they are "hosting.
I don’t think having accounts would be bad either if you offer it as an option, not a requirement. That’d could leave a user with three options. Store purchase, key, or account.
Yes, interestingly that idea came up internally as well. Also very much in line with what people know from crowdfunding platforms or similar “perks for support” models.
Sorry to hear that your subjective benefit from the desktop app is disproportionately low compared to the mobile app. But please understand that this is merely one opinion and not the baseline for pricing decisions.
Right now, I don’t see a feasible “one license for all platforms” option. Despite what you think what’s possible, I can assure that Google and Apple don’t offer any way to inject third party licenses. And there are plenty examples of apps that got kicked out of the stores by implementing workarounds. The only option would be account-based. We don’t want that. That’s a vendor lock-in and not our understanding of free software. Furthermore we’d be obliged to allow such transactions via in-app purchase, increasing the gross price even further due to additional fees.
Long story short: I agree in some points and we will see how to improve the situation, but we won’t make pricing a community decision as long as we need to cross-subsidize the consumer applications.
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