One alternative is a package manager like https://scoop.sh/ https://scoop.sh/. It's built-in repositories are vetted/curated, free to publish on and simple to i

One alternative is a package manager like https://scoop.sh/ https://scoop.sh/. It's built-in repositories are vetted/curated, free to publish on and simple to install/use. There is the downside that it's a cli-based app, but that's easily overcome with a GUI frontend add-on. One of my favorite parts of it's architecture is that it's got a mechanism for adding third party repositories (buckets), so while the publishing policy for the main bucket is mostly limited to development tools, it wouldn't be hard for the community to build a new bucket for independent software developers to use as a general distribution mechanism.