Saw this today and now I’m reconsidering if Boost is right for me. I’m really hoping this is shitty boiler plate that was accidentally copied and over looked because that is some bullshit to say “unless we decide we want to use your personal data for whatever we want”.
I know “legitimate interest” is a phrase from the cookies law but there is no legitimate interest justification for this. My data is my data and I decide who has a legitimate interest in it so advertisers can fuck off, as can Boost if this the direction it’s going.
Edit to say this blew up. I didn’t realise I was kicking as big a hornet’s nest and haven’t read all the comments yet.
To be clear, what I don’t like about this and other provisions in the terms is the language and implications around data use. I’ve no problem with ads being shown - I want developers to get paid for the work they do and that makes it possible for users to have “free” access to software if they can’t afford to purchase.
I also want to add the response from Boost’s dev below to make sure it’s visible. You’ll see that it is boilerplate but required by Google and was present in Boost for reddit. I just hadn’t seen it because I purchased it immediately based on a recommendation. It doesn’t make me happy about it but does remove some doubts I was having about the direction Boost is heading.
I will be purchasing the app to support the dev because I do like Boost but I understand not everyone can afford everything so you’ll see some other suggestions in the comments below that don’t have any ads if you’re not happy with the free version and ads with their associated loss of data privacy.
Dev here.
The dialog and its content is not created by me, it is a standard solution from Google to comply with GDPR and other laws. More info here: https://support.google.com/admob/answer/10114014?hl=en
The consent dialog is also required by Google AdMob to show ads, and it is shown when the ad network is initialized.
When the app launches, first it checks for the remove ads purchase, and if it is not present, it will initialize the ads sdk. The ad network is not initialized if the remove ads purchase is detected.
Boost for Reddit was using the very same ad networks and consent dialog.
My company is currently #79 on the list and I can screen my work laptop right now if you like. They did it because a Libreoffice license is $50 per computer while office is $300+.
Why would you need to license something that is free and open source in the first place?
Libreoffice is only free for home use, they charge license fees for business use.
It’s not true though? .What’s your source?
If you read a little further in that paragraph they do offer paid support options for larger deployments. The company I work for has over 100k employees.
Sure, but there is no need to pay for deployment which was my initial point.
A large company is going to want support, and that is what you pay for.
Or they have in-house IT that handles it. It’s not like you’d get useful support from Microsoft with Office issues, either.
We do have in-house IT but they are just glorified equipment swappers. They don’t actually fix anything, just reimage hard drives.
Have they done that mandatory for all users without exception?
No employees in accounting, finance, sales still using Excel?
I have no clue as I don’t work in those departments. But it sure seems silly to use Office in one department and Libre in others. I just know IT said it was done as a cost cutting measure and they figured since both software suites are technically compatible as long as you save all your files in office format it should be fine. (It’s not)
In that case you have no clue just how absurdly versatile Excel is.
You only want to make some tables and perform some basic operations once a day then sure, any alternative would work. But there are some things that can be done only via Excel.
I’m sure that is the case which is why I don’t understand why they chose to use libreoffice at all for any department.