Nah they identify the protocol handshake and block it altogether, so you need to find a VPN with a proprietary protocol that keeps updating.

It’s probably a modified openvpn with some package obfuscation, but works surprisingly well.

Astrill, only VPN with a good track record in China where I happen to live.

Most others crap out after a few weeks or months, and never bother to fix their protocols.

Key Messages rocks. Comes with built-in badword filter and some other nifty config.

Not open source though.

He was also doing a PhD at the same time, and writing a dissertation is not exactly a small feat.

Exactly. And lifetime is just about 100 bucks, who cares. Sure it sounds like more than the casual $2 you throw at a random app to remove ads, but considering that I used Sync daily for ~12 years, it’s really just peanuts in the long run.

I’ve bought a bunch of seemingly cheaper apps and then used them 10 times over 2 years and they ended up discontinued, that’s like 20 cents per use.

I’d have racked up tens of thousands with Sync that way. Easily the most used app on my phone.

If it’s open source, the developer can’t monetize it. Everyone will just be able to remove ads and compile it from scratch.

FOSS is all fine and dandy, unless being a developer for a popular service (or app) is your sole source of income.

Through investors, who consider the revenue a good indication for future profits. So they float the bill and receive shares in the company instead, and cash out during the IPO.

*billion

And profitability is not the same as generating revenue.

You can earn $200M a quarter and still have expenses of $220M, meaning you’re making a net loss.

That’s why companies focus on exponential growth first and don’t really care about portability, but once the userbase is large enough, they will try to monetize it. Either through ads, or paid subscriptions, premium plans, special avatars, etc.

That will surely piss of some of the early adopters, but usually isn’t significant enough to make an actual dent.

The last step (which we have also seen) is then kicking out staff. That has two effects:

1., It brings down the overhead (= salaries and attached taxes & social security) 2. The revenue per capita is inflated, i.e. it looks as if every employee is generating 4000 bucks instead of 2500 (random example), which is something that looks good in an IPO prospectus.