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No, it is not true. You must pay to release any app on either store. Google charges a one-time $25 fee, Apple charges $100 per year.

You may release a free app with no advertisements. In fact, that is the easiest configuration, since charging for the app means setting up payment information. And including ads means payment information and integrating ad serving code into your app. It is not "built in" on either platform.

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Yet it seems the vast majority of apps include ads.

It’s almost like the majority of developers write code to make money.

But now you successfully filtered most of the people that don't. And there is tons of quality software without a business incentive aside from the fun to create said software. Happens, since part of software development is a creative (non commercial) enterprise. I would write more free software too if I didn't need to pay rent. Of course free software cannot be the only model, but as I said, you won't find much of that in app stores.

they sure do. kinda sad that they mostly use functionality from the foss ecosystem created by the minority that doesn't.

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