Watch Kit Pro is Free Software
It’s free to download and own forever. You don’t need to pay for it. There’s no catch. There’s no ads, in-app purchases or paid upgrades. It’s Free Software.
We wrote and released Watch Kit Pro as Free Software because:
- We want to glorify God, and
- We want to say “thank you” to the Wear OS community (that’s you!)
The former point is because I, Terence Tan, am a Christian and this is what we do. We believe God created this entire splendid universe and writing this app is my way of paying homage. It doesn’t hurt that I can plug Jesus Christ to people on the world stage, either!
The latter point is because I think Wear OS is cool, I think the community is cool, and I think there should be more cool stuff in the world that people can enjoy. And if I expect other people to release cool stuff, I should expect the same from myself… So here we are!
(Also, I don’t like advertising. I think there’s too much in the world already. So there will be none in my app—or on this site.)
(Also, I won't sell your privacy or anything like that. See the privacy policy. I didn't write Watch Kit Pro to earn money. I've got some already.)
I want to pay, can I?
Nope, I don’t even have a way to take your money. I’d be grateful if you just:
- Use and enjoy the software
- Bonk on the “Share this” button to share with your friends
- Listen to me talk about Jesus Christ. Even if you ignore me, I have no way of knowing…
If you’re still here and want to do something, here are some charities that I’ve given money to; you might consider it too:
Thank you!
What’s with the capital letters in Free Software?
Watch Kit Pro isn’t just free as in beer; it’s also free as in freedom! It’s released to you as Free Software under the GNU General Public License version 3, which means you can access its source code, study it, use it to make your own software, sell it (if you can find a buyer) etc. etc.
(You may have heard it called Open Source, which is approximately the same idea.)
The source code is available as a repository on GitHub for anyone to fork. Note that if you modify Watch Kit Pro, you have to make the changes available to people under the same Free Software terms.
When I was a kid on my Macintosh, I got a game called GNU Chess. I was terrible at chess and I got no satisfaction out of playing it;[1] even on a Mac in those days there were better games to play. However GNU Chess came with a Read Me file that invited us to write the authors for a copy of the source code, and explained a whole bunch of things about freedom and copyleft and other heady concepts to a teenage kid.
I figured that one day I could write something like that and release it to the world. It took a while but I did it!
I still don’t. When I play chess, I win or lose. Then I feel like I’ve finished work for the day and can go home. There's no achievement in it. ↩︎