To be clear, I don't expect it. I'll be happy either way to see tools developed that encourage the use of Lemmy over reddit.

Being open-source would be an additional value proposition that I, and maybe many others, would happily pay for. I use Jerboa, and will probably continue to use it.

Maybe this is not apples-to-apples, but my favorite audio-book player has separate free and paid versions only differentiated by the presence of dark mode. It's such a trivial thing to paywall that it comes across to me as a respectful petition for generosity. I bought the paid version and then gave multiple tips through the in-app purchase.