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This is good! Hopefully Purism can build on their recognition to funnel resources toward FOSS-mobile applications because this will help us all. This reminds m

This is good! Hopefully Purism can build on their recognition to funnel resources toward FOSS-mobile applications because this will help us all. This reminds me of something else. What would be the best model for a FOSS "app store" with mechanisms for compensation? Lowering the barrier for transactions to FOSS projects really helps their survival and sustenance by individuals who cannot contribute code. Here's a very half-baked thought: One can imagine users supporting community servers (matrix, activitypub/mastodon, etc.) and applications through a cryptocurrency wallet that is loaded in the same way that people load their g--gle/a--le wallets. One can also imagine applications that can tie into this wallet to compensate publishers based on some model (a transaction API like g--gle/a--le or something like what brave is doing with the BAT). My question is what are the failure modes of such a model? For example, this still wouldn't stop the perverse incentives of: - Content publishers going for the types of bait that generate the most clicks. Clicks=compensation regardless of it's from ads or some sort of attention token. - Application developers casing addiction mechanisms that go after whales. The same loot-box mechanisms can be implemented with a FOSS game that uses a crypto wallet API.

db579 6y ago
I'd be interested in a Purism app store that charges a small fee per app "purchase". The apps would be Libre so nothing stopping people packaging/compiling etc themselves (or getting from an alternative source) but to me the convenience of having that done already and curated/integrated would be worth a couple of bucks per app and even if it was optional, just having the default be paying a small fee might give enough of a nudge in the right direction.
greggyb 6y ago
I'd be happy to use an app store that tracks active screen-time per app and disburses a monthly "subscription" proportionally to the developers of all the apps I use. I don't have any concern about the type of currency used to pay. A quick check of my screentime over the past few days shows only two apps which wouldn't benefit from this: DAVx and Syncthing. Both of these are essentially daemons I configured once, and ideally never see the app interface of ever again until I get a new phone. Otherwise, apps I benefit from are represented in the screentime of the past couple days.
- phh 6y ago
  I've started developing something like that, and I started by noticing like you that basing on screentime isn't fair to apps that are purely in background, so I tried to compensate for that. Then I found that some apps, even though they were useful, didn't actually do much under the hood. Like say Frost for Facebook which is mostly a webview with few extensions. So I wanted to add a section for things that are mostly a "viewer". An additional example of such a thing is a media player: if you look 10h a day at videos, it's thanks to the content, not to the viewer. And then, there are behaviours you maybe don't want to trigger, like getting people addicted. 2048 using the screentime metric would have gained a lot of money (and it does deserve a lot!), but IMO people who got addicted to it should give them less. And what about apps that have paying variant on Google Play? Which deserves more money, the app that is simply free on fdroid and Play Store, or the app that is free on fdroid, but paying (or free reduced) on Play Store. So, I spent few days trying to make something fair, and at the moment I believe that the most fair I can do is to give equally among all apps that I've used in the last 7 days.
  - greggyb 6y ago
    Yeah, there's plenty of edge case handling you might want to do. My first pass would be to do it based on screentime. My second pass would be to give the screentime ratios to the user, allowing them to tweak the ratios themselves.
    - JoshTriplett 6y ago
      > My second pass would be to give the screentime ratios to the user, allowing them to tweak the ratios themselves. Absolutely. Look at what Humble Bundle does, where you can tweak the proportion of your payment that goes to various things. That's still quite novel.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - ricksharp 6y ago
    Give equally among all apps used in a time period sounds like the best metric. In fact, I would argue that some of the most useful apps might be ones that we use less - because they accomplished the required goal.
necrotic_comp 6y ago
Isn't apt-get, pacman, emerge, etc. more or less equivalent to an app store ? I don't think there's necessarily a need for projects to be funded or paid for - giving back to the mobile ecosystem the same way we give back to the desktop ecosystem seems like a pretty fair way to go.
- TylerE 6y ago
  Not really, because they have no discovery mechanism. (And no, a search command that kinda sort matches on description strings doesn’t count)
  - e12e 6y ago
    There are a few gui apps that leverage tags for browsing dpkg/apt?
  - gnufx 6y ago
    In what way? I don't see any fundamental difference between discovering GNU/Linux packages and Android ones (in the "stores" I've used -- f-droid, /e/ apps, and Aurora).
  - intricatedetail 6y ago
    Why it doesn't count? It works perfect for me. How else do you search for apps in app store? New, popular?
    - phist_mcgee 6y ago
      Algorithms that match intended words and synonyms over verbatim pattern matching. Seriously, apt search sucks because if you are searching for something that does not include the word you use, it falls over completely. Just like every single time I try and brew install a package I sort of remember the name of, it will just not give me anything.
  - noisy_boy 6y ago
    This could be an area of improvement. E.g. I don't think adding metadata to packages would be particularly complicated and that could help (e.g. using tags) with discovery.
EGreg 6y ago
https://qbix.com/token https://qbix.com/token Example of what can happen
Budabellly 6y ago
This is what Coil does for the web: https://coil.com/ https://coil.com/
XorNot 6y ago
I'll pretty much pay for anything which takes the packaging out of the equation. There's value in not having to build and distribute my own stuff (and those mechanisms need financing).
- berkes 6y ago
  On top of that, I'll gladly pay for hosted versions of self-hosting systems. Nextcloud, Mailserver with DNS, gitea, drone/jenkins, piwik, etc. Sounds counterproductive, to pay someone to host something that is meant to be hosted by yourself, but most often, I just need the option to move to selfhosted when time arrives. Sure, I can host my own piwik, or gitea, or nexcloud (I do) and even (painfully) manage my mailserver and DNS with mailinabox. Out of principle. But the TCO of that is mountainhigh, if I'm honest. Tucking someone €9.99 a month to deal with one of these for me, would save me a lot, in the grand scheme. Edit: what I'm trying to say: I'm convinced there is a businesscase there. There's money to be made in this area of FLOSS, which can trickle down into the upstream projects or be a businesscase as funding for the projects themselves even.
  - fsflover 6y ago
    Then you might consider buying Librem One services by Purism: https://librem.one https://librem.one.
app4soft 6y ago
> Hopefully Purism can build on their recognition to funnel resources toward FOSS-mobile applications because this will help us all. What about FLOSS-mobile applications?[0] - FOSS is "Free + Open-Source" - FLOSS is "FOSS + Libre" [0] https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/262/what-is-the-difference-between-foss-and-floss https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/262/what-is-t...
- minimalist 6y ago
  I've always thought the F in FOSS was for "Free as in Freedom" not "Free as in Gratis" but yes, FLOSS was the intention here, thank you for the reminder.
  - db579 6y ago
    Always thought the same. By that definition I care much more about LOSS than about FOSS or FLOSS but I don't see that used ever...
- toyg 6y ago
  This is just an annoying result of OSS projects squatting on FOSS, re-muddling the waters about what "Free" was supposed to mean (free as in freedom/"libre"). The original dichotomy was just OSS / FOSS. I guess the resulting division is precise (opensource you pay for / opensource and gratis / opensource and free as in freedom), I just find "floss" somewhat gross and just say Free Software.
  - amosbatto 6y ago
    The "L" part was an effort to include all the speakers of Romance languages who say "software libre" or "software livre". In my experience living in South America, very few people say "código abierto" or "fuente abierto" at the Linux conferences except if they are companies presenting business plans. For most, they don't see the need for the division between "free software" and "open source", so FLOSS is a more inclusive term to cover more of the world. My personal belief is that we need the discourse of both the OSI and FSF because they appeal to different segments, and we need both the business community and people care about user rights to be in the movement if we want FOSS to succeed.

db579 6y ago

I'd be interested in a Purism app store that charges a small fee per app "purchase". The apps would be Libre so nothing stopping people packaging/compiling etc themselves (or getting from an alternative source) but to me the convenience of having that done already and curated/integrated would be worth a couple of bucks per app and even if it was optional, just having the default be paying a small fee might give enough of a nudge in the right direction.

greggyb 6y ago

I'd be happy to use an app store that tracks active screen-time per app and disburses a monthly "subscription" proportionally to the developers of all the apps I use. I don't have any concern about the type of currency used to pay. A quick check of my screentime over the past few days shows only two apps which wouldn't benefit from this: DAVx and Syncthing. Both of these are essentially daemons I configured once, and ideally never see the app interface of ever again until I get a new phone. Otherwise, apps I benefit from are represented in the screentime of the past couple days.

phh 6y ago
I've started developing something like that, and I started by noticing like you that basing on screentime isn't fair to apps that are purely in background, so I tried to compensate for that. Then I found that some apps, even though they were useful, didn't actually do much under the hood. Like say Frost for Facebook which is mostly a webview with few extensions. So I wanted to add a section for things that are mostly a "viewer". An additional example of such a thing is a media player: if you look 10h a day at videos, it's thanks to the content, not to the viewer. And then, there are behaviours you maybe don't want to trigger, like getting people addicted. 2048 using the screentime metric would have gained a lot of money (and it does deserve a lot!), but IMO people who got addicted to it should give them less. And what about apps that have paying variant on Google Play? Which deserves more money, the app that is simply free on fdroid and Play Store, or the app that is free on fdroid, but paying (or free reduced) on Play Store. So, I spent few days trying to make something fair, and at the moment I believe that the most fair I can do is to give equally among all apps that I've used in the last 7 days.
- greggyb 6y ago
  Yeah, there's plenty of edge case handling you might want to do. My first pass would be to do it based on screentime. My second pass would be to give the screentime ratios to the user, allowing them to tweak the ratios themselves.
  - JoshTriplett 6y ago
    > My second pass would be to give the screentime ratios to the user, allowing them to tweak the ratios themselves. Absolutely. Look at what Humble Bundle does, where you can tweak the proportion of your payment that goes to various things. That's still quite novel.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- ricksharp 6y ago
  Give equally among all apps used in a time period sounds like the best metric. In fact, I would argue that some of the most useful apps might be ones that we use less - because they accomplished the required goal.

necrotic_comp 6y ago

Isn't apt-get, pacman, emerge, etc. more or less equivalent to an app store ? I don't think there's necessarily a need for projects to be funded or paid for - giving back to the mobile ecosystem the same way we give back to the desktop ecosystem seems like a pretty fair way to go.

TylerE 6y ago
Not really, because they have no discovery mechanism. (And no, a search command that kinda sort matches on description strings doesn’t count)
- e12e 6y ago
  There are a few gui apps that leverage tags for browsing dpkg/apt?
- gnufx 6y ago
  In what way? I don't see any fundamental difference between discovering GNU/Linux packages and Android ones (in the "stores" I've used -- f-droid, /e/ apps, and Aurora).
- intricatedetail 6y ago
  Why it doesn't count? It works perfect for me. How else do you search for apps in app store? New, popular?
  - phist_mcgee 6y ago
    Algorithms that match intended words and synonyms over verbatim pattern matching. Seriously, apt search sucks because if you are searching for something that does not include the word you use, it falls over completely. Just like every single time I try and brew install a package I sort of remember the name of, it will just not give me anything.
- noisy_boy 6y ago
  This could be an area of improvement. E.g. I don't think adding metadata to packages would be particularly complicated and that could help (e.g. using tags) with discovery.

EGreg 6y ago

https://qbix.com/token https://qbix.com/token Example of what can happen

Budabellly 6y ago

This is what Coil does for the web: https://coil.com/ https://coil.com/

XorNot 6y ago

I'll pretty much pay for anything which takes the packaging out of the equation. There's value in not having to build and distribute my own stuff (and those mechanisms need financing).

berkes 6y ago
On top of that, I'll gladly pay for hosted versions of self-hosting systems. Nextcloud, Mailserver with DNS, gitea, drone/jenkins, piwik, etc. Sounds counterproductive, to pay someone to host something that is meant to be hosted by yourself, but most often, I just need the option to move to selfhosted when time arrives. Sure, I can host my own piwik, or gitea, or nexcloud (I do) and even (painfully) manage my mailserver and DNS with mailinabox. Out of principle. But the TCO of that is mountainhigh, if I'm honest. Tucking someone €9.99 a month to deal with one of these for me, would save me a lot, in the grand scheme. Edit: what I'm trying to say: I'm convinced there is a businesscase there. There's money to be made in this area of FLOSS, which can trickle down into the upstream projects or be a businesscase as funding for the projects themselves even.
- fsflover 6y ago
  Then you might consider buying Librem One services by Purism: https://librem.one https://librem.one.

app4soft 6y ago

> Hopefully Purism can build on their recognition to funnel resources toward FOSS-mobile applications because this will help us all. What about FLOSS-mobile applications?[0] - FOSS is "Free + Open-Source" - FLOSS is "FOSS + Libre" [0] https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/262/what-is-the-difference-between-foss-and-floss https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/262/what-is-t...

minimalist 6y ago
I've always thought the F in FOSS was for "Free as in Freedom" not "Free as in Gratis" but yes, FLOSS was the intention here, thank you for the reminder.
- db579 6y ago
  Always thought the same. By that definition I care much more about LOSS than about FOSS or FLOSS but I don't see that used ever...
toyg 6y ago
This is just an annoying result of OSS projects squatting on FOSS, re-muddling the waters about what "Free" was supposed to mean (free as in freedom/"libre"). The original dichotomy was just OSS / FOSS. I guess the resulting division is precise (opensource you pay for / opensource and gratis / opensource and free as in freedom), I just find "floss" somewhat gross and just say Free Software.
- amosbatto 6y ago
  The "L" part was an effort to include all the speakers of Romance languages who say "software libre" or "software livre". In my experience living in South America, very few people say "código abierto" or "fuente abierto" at the Linux conferences except if they are companies presenting business plans. For most, they don't see the need for the division between "free software" and "open source", so FLOSS is a more inclusive term to cover more of the world. My personal belief is that we need the discourse of both the OSI and FSF because they appeal to different segments, and we need both the business community and people care about user rights to be in the movement if we want FOSS to succeed.