I don’t understand the hate for charging for a product. I pay for a Mastodon client. If a Lemmy client that I really liked cost money and I felt the price was reasonable, I’d support that developer, too.

I don’t understand the hate for charging for a product

I think the hate is mainly for the $100 lifetime payment. That’s a lot for some people.

To build on what other people are saying, the $100 also is supposed to cover the cost of running servers and networks that the app has to use for the more unique, advanced features. Those are all things that will cost the developer to keep up and running - it’s honestly nice that you even have the option to pay for lifetime since, once you’ve used the app for six years, the dev is going to start losing money off of your using the app.