Yep. In some cases, Google play sales subsidize FOSS users. In other cases, if the user count is not high enough through all sources, it’s just not worth it for the devs to keep working on a niche project. F-Droid users are a tiny fraction of users, and ROM users are a fraction of F-Droid users.
There’s been app whose developers stopped after no longer being able to publish to the Google Play Store, even though they also published to F-Droid.
I don’t know why, but the “cooling effect” is certainly real.
Yep. In some cases, Google play sales subsidize FOSS users. In other cases, if the user count is not high enough through all sources, it’s just not worth it for the devs to keep working on a niche project. F-Droid users are a tiny fraction of users, and ROM users are a fraction of F-Droid users.