Making the rounds recently is a proposal being made to add in payments, donations and subscriptions options to Flathub.
The proposal is available on the Plaintext Group GitHub, which was submitted by Robert McQueen, who is CEO of the Endless OS Foundation and GNOME Board President. For some context here Plaintext Group are "a nonpartisan, technology innovation policy initiative being developed by Schmidt Futures" (Schmidt Futures was founded by ex Google CEO Eric Schmidt).
As per the proposal they're trying to incentivize more "participation in the Linux application ecosystem, and remove financial barriers that prevent diverse participation" and they've already been working on adding in donations and payments on Flathub via Stripe and verify developers too with this year moving onto adding in subscriptions, reoccurring donations, new review tools to prevent abuse, automated security scanning and more to eventually have Flathub become self-sustaining. This is a joint effort between GNOME and KDE.
What they're trying to do is get extra funding to help towards their goal of expanding Flathub, as explained in the proposal they're seeking $100,000 USD from the Plaintext Group to cover the remaining budget needed to enable all this.
To note: this proposal has actually been there since November 2022, when the proposal itself was accepted into the GitHub repository for consideration.
What do you think to this? Especially interesting with Canonical recently going on the opposite direction by having Ubuntu flavours remove Flatpak by default.
Flathub is also going through a rebranding.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Arehandoro Feb 27
gradyvuckovic Feb 27
ElectricPrism Feb 27
I don't care how it happens but getting money to linux software devs is in MY best interest.
I would buy several commercial tools right now if they were available starting with Affinity Photo 2 -- it was my understanding some people got it running in Bottles a few months back.
People exchange money for convenience.
If they carve out a niche and there are rewards like profile badges or a exchange that drives development I'm open for new models and new things.
Money is for a protection, everyone needs it and theres nothing wrong with making some making FOSS licensed stuff in exchange for ease like Ardour.
CyborgZeta Feb 27
Overall I think this is bad news for linux
Quoting: CyborgZetaNothing wrong with supporting the people who make, or package, the software I use.I wonder how they prevent someone from lazily throwing a package together and selling it on flathub while the original authors get nothing. Similar to what happens on Steam, e.g. https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2022/10/someone-released-the-foss-rts-0-ad-on-steam-without-speaking-to-the-developers/.
Quoting: KlaasQuoting: CyborgZetaNothing wrong with supporting the people who make, or package, the software I use.I wonder how they prevent someone from lazily throwing a package together and selling it on flathub while the original authors get nothing. Similar to what happens on Steam, e.g. https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2022/10/someone-released-the-foss-rts-0-ad-on-steam-without-speaking-to-the-developers/.
Nothing, anyone can sell free software.
Quoting: KlaasQuoting: CyborgZetaNothing wrong with supporting the people who make, or package, the software I use.I wonder how they prevent someone from lazily throwing a package together and selling it on flathub while the original authors get nothing. Similar to what happens on Steam, e.g. https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2022/10/someone-released-the-foss-rts-0-ad-on-steam-without-speaking-to-the-developers/.
Looks like a verification system is in the works alongside the donations. Haven't looked into the details of the gatekeeping method, but at least something is being worked on.
Quoting: MercifulBossSounds like bad news as all the app developers will transition to flatpak and paid services. There will be few free FOSS developers left and this will likely leave distro repositories empty. I'd also expect that the open source movement will die as app developers seek to protect their revenue and close their code so they can continue making money.If application developers wanted to make money, they would've created applications for systems where they could actually make some money. These days it's so simple to create cross platform applications (and monetize them) but people still create Free Linux/GNOME/KDE/<INSERT YOUR PREFERRED DE PROJECT> applications because they want to. Nothing is going to change.
Overall I think this is bad news for linux
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