Linux app depot Flathub may offer paid-for software

The GNOME and KDE organizations are moving connected a connection to crowdsource a large alteration successful Flathub: to make it an app shop for Linux – including for paid software.

The proposal appears connected nan GitHub page of nan Plaintext Group. This is an inaugural of Schmidt Futures – an NGO backed by former Alphabet chair Eric Schmidt and his woman Wendy which is also backing AI research. The proposal's authors are rather large names successful their ain correct too: GNOME president Robert McQueen, erstwhile GNOME executive head and Debian task leader Neil McGovern, and KDE president Aleix Pol.

The summary gets correct to nan point:

Although immoderate successful nan FOSS organization only discovered nan connection astatine nan extremity of past week, nan past alteration to nan archive was successful mid-January. It's not marque new, and it's imaginable that this has been known by various Linux vendors for immoderate time. The past modification day is earlier Canonical's caller move to expunge Flatpak from Ubuntu and its remixes. We person asked Canonical if they person immoderate comment, but pinch nary reply astatine nan clip of writing.

The Plaintext Group has had a Twitter account since 2020, but hasn't tweeted yet. It's imaginable that this wasn't meant to spell nationalist conscionable yet, and it's only 1 of complete a twelve proposals successful nan Plaintext Group's "OSS virtual incubator" folder.

Finding ways to money unfastened root package improvement is simply a long-standing issue, and galore independent developers person been driven to despair complete nan deficiency of reward for moreover very wide utilized programs. We reported connected this successful relationship pinch core-js earlier this month, but this was acold from nan first instance. Various efforts to pull sponsorship go backmost years.

• Pop unfastened a cask: Homebrew type 4.0.0 is here
• Official: Lomiri desktop now runs connected Debian
• By bid of Canonical: Official Ubuntu flavors must extremity including Flatpak by default
• Debian-based TrueNAS Scale updated – and iXsystems wins a gong

The large Linux corporates chiefly attraction connected server products and services, which has been very lucrative for Red Hat and not excessively shabby for SUSE. This doesn't thief nan desktop world, though.

Canonical asked for donations to get Ubuntu complete nan statement a decade ago, but that subsequently disappeared. Elementary OS has an absorbing "pay what you want" model, which seems to person worked reasonably well, though nan institution faced problems which delayed nan latest release. Zorin OS has a simpler exemplary still: only nan basal versions are free, and the afloat version costs $39.

These initiatives person helped immoderate of nan smaller distro vendors, but not nan broader organization of desktop developers. Turning Flathub into a shop and adding paid apps does not sound harmful successful and of itself. Once money is involved, though, location are issues astir ineligible liabilities, gross sharing and truthful on.

A paid shop requires moderation and contented curation, and moreover nan big, vastly lucrative commercialized ones – which tin presumably spend armies of unit to inspect nan contents – have faced problems pinch predatory apps, positive questions of censorship.

At this stage, nan thought remains conscionable a proposal. This is simply a difficult area pinch thorny problems, and it seems apt that it will require full-time staff. The mobility past becomes whether it tin make much than it costs to run, and really overmuch of its revenues scope nan developers. ®