Not sure how I feel about this tbh, fair play if that's what he wants to do. I don't think it will make me stay with reddit. The community feel of lemmy and kbin is making me finally enjoy contributing again. Towards the end with reddit it felt so... Pointless.
Based on the prices the Apollo dev was slinging around, I highly doubt Relay will be around even after this guy "figures out" what to charge his users. Unless he's aiming for whales with deep pockets I give it maybe 3-6 months before he also folds. Reddit can also easily move the goal post on Relay, which is inevitable, because Reddit wants people to use thier app.
This is what I'm thinking too. Narwhal is sticking around but once Narwhal 2 comes out it'll be $5-7 per month and more for a user who makes a lot of API calls. If I'm remembering correctly Christian figured it would be close to $10 per month to support Apollo's heavy users without going in the red. That's crazy money to pay for access to Reddit.
And to not even have feature parity (no polls, for example) and not be able to view NSFW posts...
Exactly. I want to be empathetic to the dev, after all /u/Spez put them in an awful position. But scabbing for Reddit isn't going to end well. Better to accept that the blow has been dealt, and to move onto the next platform and/or project.