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  • People say it's the price (to develop), but it's not IMO. It's the community. Lots of developers use iOS (in the US), but in my experience, power users who develop FOSS in their free time have a high propensity to be Android users. There's just so much more freedom in the platform.

    Add this to the fact that outside of the US Android is more popular as the device costs are lower and there is less blind brand loyalty due to that, so developers in those countries focus on the platforms they use.

    I believe the latter was the case with the current FOSS weather app I use (Breezy Weather).

    Update: This is personal experience, but I've never met a free-time FOSS app creator (or contributer) that didn't develop for the device they use. And I've met a lot of them.

    Final edit: Weather apps may be biased with age. With React Native and Flutter taking over new apps, platforn agnostic apps may slowly go away over time. But which FOSS dev wants to build a new weather app when there are so many (for Android) already?

    • iOS is kind of annoying to develop for. You kind of need to be entrenched in the Apple ecosystem to do it.

      I also think there’s the niche part of it. Weather apps are kind of niche, if I’m going out I only care about the temps and whether or not it might rain, and iOS already has a great built in app for that. I love FOSS, but I’m not sure I care enough about my weather app to seek out a FOSS alternative to the default one.

      Also I’m not sure Android has a weather app by default? I have a Pixel 6 as a work phone but don’t think I’ve ever checked for a weather app on it.

      • IOS has a preinstalled weather app and people just use that. For whatever reason. Everything is so integrated, I guess 3rd party weather apps wouldnt even display correctly. On Android, simply use a Notification and thats it.

  • weather

    Because Apple damn sucks. Its useless to have FOSS apps on this platform if you ask me. Plus they go fully "license business" and dont allow many FOSS licenses that have "this software comes with no guarantees" in it, e.g. the GPL

  • You make an Android app, you leave the binary on Github or wherever, or even just get people to compile it themselves.

    On Apple, you need to go though the whole appstore bullshit.

  • I think this goes for open source in general. I guess its just because of Apple and how locked down and restricted they make things. AOSP is open source and as a whole is pretty open with allowing things like sideloading and more freedom and control to developers and users in general, so I guess that encourages more FOSS developers to support it and the platform, over something like iOS for instance with its locked down ecosystem.

  • This issue isn't limited to weather apps. iOS apps in general tend to be closed source.

40 comments