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Ask HN: How to sell apps on Linux?

Hi HN, With the recent major advancements of Linux phones and tablets, convergence becoming a reality, I was wondering: How to make a living creating apps for Linux, whether it be for the Desktop or the phones? Do you have any experience or examples you want to share? Are in-app subscriptions and enterprise support the only way to go? As the usual distribution channels (repositories and 'App Stores') don't seem to provide a straightforward way to sell software.

herbst 6y ago
Ubuntu has a store, Steam allows (any/game related?) software, Itch/Humble are kinda common (again kinda gaming related) But buying little apps is simply not common on linux. Sure many would but why when you can just apt an easily alternative. If you produce niche or major software subscription, buying licenses and co are more common anyway.
- sylvain_kerkour 6y ago
  Thank you! I completely forgot that Steam is not for games only.
  - deleted 6y ago
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- loloquwowndueo 6y ago
  Note though that the Ubuntu store is only for discovery, it doesn’t have any support for paid applications. It did, but this was deprecated a couple of years ago as the then Ubuntu store service started changing to accommodate snaps. Paid applications do exist but they must implement their own post-installation payment mechanism - the snap store doesn’t provide any facilities for this.
- simulo 6y ago
  Most what steam offers is game related, but the categories they have are rather broad, one of them being "utilities".
- gnulinux 6y ago
  > But buying little apps is simply not common on linux. Sure many would but why when you can just apt an easily alternative. Because I want to pay people to write good software for me. I hate using OSX and Windows, but I want to have a DAW like Logic etc. My only options are stuff like Ardour, which happen not to work on my computer (because linux audio system is broken) due to alsa/jack/pulseaudio weirdness. And I have no leverage over Ardour developers. All I can do is: * Look online to find solutions to my problem. This didn't lead anywhere. * Download Ardour code and understand how it connects to the audio device and reproduce it, this way I can see the error. Luckily I can read code, most consumers can't. * Send a message to Ardour devs/forums and cross fingers they help me out. I want a company that produces software like MSFT, AAPL, Adobe etc and make it linux first and GPL. I understand that this is a terrible business model, which is why I want to pay extra money for this shit. Like Logic on OSX is $200. I want to pay $300 something that's approximately like that but works on my distro as flawlessly as Logic works on OSX. I just want to not read pulse audio man files when I need a DAW, in exchange for $X * $200. I'm just daydreaming, I know this stuff will never happen. I'm not sure exactly why. I hate the modern software ecosystem.
  - pta2002 6y ago
    Reaper is absolutely amazing, works on Linux just fine (natively! And supports LV2 plugins) and it's only $60 (and the demo version is a WinRar-like "I'm still using it" button). It's also a completely no-bullshit approach to software development, no subscriptions, nothing like that. Buy the license once, and upgrade to a commercial license (which is still less than the price of something like Ableton or Logic) if you are using it to make more than something like $20k. It's proprietary, but it's completely customizable, even coming with its own scripting engine. I think you should give it a shot, GPL is the only thing missing from your list of requirements, but it's also made by a small independent team that doesn't do the usual crap associated with bigger apps. A good alternative to JACK and PulseAudio is PipeWire, which for me has worked basically completely flawlessly and supports JACK and PulseAudio bridges natively.
    - gnulinux 6y ago
      Sounds good, I'll check it out. I was mostly giving DAW as an example though, same would go to any kind of specialized software. EDIT: unrelated but, from Reaper purchase page: > If you own multiple computers, you may install the same license key on all of them, as long as you only use REAPER on one computer at a time. I love this, let's not pretend people have a single computer. A have multiple linux workstations, and an OSX workstation. As long as it's me, the person who bought it, is using the software on different machines, I should be able to get away with single license.
tubularhells 6y ago
Ask the developers of Insync, UKUU and Aseprite. They sell licences via their sites, with activation codes or Google authentication. But if you want to make a living, I suggest making a Linux phone oriented application store first and foremost, and figuring out the DRM that way. Developers will come if an ecosystem is built for easy deployments and selling software.
wesamco 6y ago
Sublime HQ Pty Ltd, developers of Sublime Text and Sublime Merge sell licenses and use the package managers of each distro and host their own package mirror. > Sublime Text 3 includes an auto-upgrade mechanism on Windows and OS X to make upgrades a snap. Instead of going against the grain of the Linux ecosystem, packages and package repositories are provided for most of the major distributions. https://www.sublimetext.com/docs/3/linux_repositories.html https://www.sublimetext.com/docs/3/linux_repositories.html
- woodruffw 6y ago
  Speaking as an end user: I deeply appreciate this particular approach. Sublime is one of the few {paid,proprietary} applications that I use on Linux; being able to install it with my normal package manager reduces my cognitive overhead and keeps me reassured that updates do indeed go through.
  - na85 6y ago
    Interesting. Does Sublime come with the source (how is it licensed?) when you purchase it?
    - skadamat 6y ago
      I believe Sublime's source is open source but not for re-selling. You can use it 100% free but it has a popup asking you to upgrade to a license once every few weeks or so.
      - oblio 6y ago
        It's not open source, did they change that?
      - nicoburns 6y ago
        This is incorrect. Sublime's source code isn't published at all (or even leaked). You are correct that you have use it for free with a nag window, although this is against the license beyond an unspecified "evaluation period".
brudgers 6y ago
Make something useful for Linux users. TurboPrint is an example of Linux software I have bought. It's more capable than CUPS for my use case. It solves a known problem. It sells via a website. Makes enough money to have been around a long time and charges enough to stay up to date. It is also in a market segment that is orders of magnitude larger than Linux phones an tablets are ever likely to achieve. Good luck.
orta 6y ago
elementary OS has an App Store: https://developer.elementary.io https://developer.elementary.io I'm not sure if it'd be big enough to get you doing it full time though.
turbinerneiter 6y ago
I'd really wish for a paid app store on Linux to be more common, especially for open source apps. Make it a monthly recurring donation even, but send me a proper bill for bookkeeping.
- TitanXen 6y ago
  Look into the app store made by the elementary os team. It is very similar to what you wish for.
vbsteven 6y ago
Support or service subscriptions are probably your best bet. The only software I have paid for on my Linux machines is IntelliJ.
dec0dedab0de 6y ago
You can follow all the same techniques that software companies on other OSes use, for example I bought Pycharm to use on linux, and its no different than anywhere else. Steam also runs on linux. If you want to be OpenSource and sell your apps there are a few different ways. You could not provide any official downloads unless they pay, your paying customers could legally redistribute your code, but only you would have the official source. You could charge for binaries and provide code free of charge like Ardour. You could also sell support contracts, so paying gives them an offical account to ask questions on the forum or a number to call in. But either way its the same as windows or mac, the only reason most non free software companies don't sell linux software is because there are less users, and they don't want to deal with making sure it works.
- edgyquant 6y ago
  This is unrelated but I love PyCharm and have only switched recently. I just wish there was an obvious way to open a terminal in window like on VSCode, there may be and I just don’t know it, but alt tabbing works fine for now
  - sedeki 6y ago
    There is a terminal tab at the bottom of PyCharm.
  - calmoo 6y ago
    Terminal windows are built into Pycharm. They also automatically open with the project's virtualenv for each terminal instance which is great.
  - shagie 6y ago
    The documentation on the part of PyCharm: https://www.jetbrains.com/help/pycharm/terminal-emulator.html https://www.jetbrains.com/help/pycharm/terminal-emulator.htm... One of the neat things with JetBrains IDEs is the 'help' menu. More than once I've done a "go to that menu and just start typing what I'm looking for" Typing 'terminal' in that menu and then selecting the spot where it can be accessed from brings up the appropriate menu - https://i.imgur.com/Z3u4grB.png https://i.imgur.com/Z3u4grB.png Also, for me (there may be some other settings that I've got from other installs), at the bottom bar, left hand side the defaults are: "TODO", "Problems", "Terminal", and "Python Console". Selecting "Terminal" will launch a default shell. The "Python Console" brings up an interactive mode REPL. And yes, there is a lot of tooling in JetBrains IDEs that are... in days of old it would be "here's a 300 page manual that no one reads." The Help Menu is incredibly useful for finding things - even experienced users. https://i.imgur.com/4duykxh.png https://i.imgur.com/4duykxh.png - the IDE Features Trainer and Productivity Guide are really useful for discovery.
burtonator 6y ago
I'm about to get downvoted to oblivion but the solution here is don't sell apps on Linux. People on Linux don't pay for apps. Target a platform like iOS where users are willing to pay for apps. 85% of total app store volume across iOS and Android is from iOS.
- bscphil 6y ago
  Not going to downvote you, but if you are downvoted it's probably because this isn't true. Take the video game market as an example; people are very much willing to pay for video games on Linux (via Humble Bundle, Itch, Steam, or GoG) even when the games are usually DRM-free and could trivially be pirated. If there's not much of a market in other areas, then frankly I'd have to say it's because the open source ecosystem is simply too good on Linux. There's already an app that can do what you want for 99% of use cases, and it's open source and free. Hard to compete with that. You wouldn't criticize Windows because someone can't find anyone to buy their web browser; Linux is like that, just for most every application.
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    It is hardly enough to sustain a business, the other platforms are the ones that keep the lights on.
  - happyjack 6y ago
    I largely agree with this. LibreOffice is great, Octave is great, Firefox / Chrome, GIMP, etc. There are already a ton of free and great applications on Linux.
- _trampeltier 6y ago
  I'm not a Linux user because it does cost me nothing. I even have a couple of unused Win Pro licences around here. I'm a Linux user because I like my private freedom.
- pavlov 6y ago
  JetBrains does about $300M annual revenue, and a substantial portion of that is from Linux users. Clearly people on Linux do pay for desktop apps if they offer enough value.
devenblake 6y ago
>How to make a living creating apps for Linux, whether it be for the Desktop or the phones? I want to phrase this with as much hostility as possible: Don't. Software cannot be owned or paid for and any attempt to normalize the opposite is cruel to anybody with a functioning brain. You cannot own a thought, or data, or bits or bytes, and much of the software you will no doubt use to create your premium software was made with this philosophy. If you want to solicit donations that's very cool and there are people who will donate to you. But any attempt to abridge access to code without mandatory payment is not only ridiculous but purely unethical. (and no, I don't care how many HN points I lose by saying this)
- tsegers 6y ago
  > and much of the software you will no doubt use to create your premium software was made with this philosophy. Even the FSF considers selling software a good thing [1] [1] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html
- fctorial 6y ago
  > I don't care how many HN points I lose by saying this 5 at most
- jraph 6y ago
  You can ethically sell a service with your libre software.
- oblio 6y ago
  You're literally against people making a living developing software for Linux...
- jldugger 6y ago
  > But any attempt to abridge access to code without mandatory payment is not only ridiculous but purely unethical Is it ethical to pay someone to create software that wouldn't otherwise exist? Is it ethical to create the software and then refuse to deliver it until the check clears? Is it ethical for a semiretired hacker in the US to build a 1 person SaaS company around software written by someone making do with ten dollars a day in the phillipines without sending them a dime?
deleted 6y ago
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inetknght 6y ago
I am both a developer for and user of Linux. Paid-for software is best distributed using your own repository. @wesamco's comment describes how Sublime Text is distributed and it works well. Other paid-for softwares have similar success. I use Synergy. To install, I need to download a pre-built application. When it runs it will ask for a license key. I type in the license key and it goes and verifies it. Both solutions solve different problems. The repository solves package management: installation, versioning, and dependency chains. License keys ensure that the software is paid for.
- nly 6y ago
  As someone who used to work on Synergy I can assure you that building a .deb or .rpm that works across as many distros as possible is a royal pita. Around about the time I was working on it half the distros users wanted to use were on OpenSSL 1.0 and the other half on 1.1.1. even Debian and Ubuntu were split due to their release cycles being different. Also, Linux support was never a priority for the company. You should probably save your money and just use Barrier, a FOSS fork.
  - inetknght 6y ago
    > As someone who used to work on Synergy I can assure you that building a .deb or .rpm that works across as many distros as possible is a royal pita. I don't disagree. > You should probably save your money and just use Barrier, a FOSS fork. Synergy has worked for my needs and so I paid for it. How does Barrier differ?
    - nly 6y ago
      > How does Barrier differ? The people who work on it give a damn
pjmlp 6y ago
The only way is to force the users to pay via Web applications and SaaS services, really.
ris 6y ago
Artificial scarcity is an absurd and broken model. Please don't put yourself or your prospective users through that nonsense.
- oblio 6y ago
  What artificial scarcity?
- jonahbenton 6y ago
  IOW, duh, FIRST solve the artificial scarcity of food and housing, THEN write free as in beer/license software. Stop doing it wrong. /sarcasm
- arcturus17 6y ago
  Aspiring to pay your bills by whatever legal means you deem appropriate is a fantastic model though, and I thoroughly commend OP for trying.
zamalek 6y ago
Softmaker have a free version and a pro version. The former is available in the public proprietary repos (for Arch, at least). The latter is a download and requires an activation key. Their free version converted me into a paying customer.
freedomben 6y ago
I'm a long time Linux user who buys software. If you want me to buy it, these are the things you should do: 1. Provide an RPM repo or COPR repo I can add so it is managed with dnf. You'll also want to provide .deb too 2. Make source available with payment, and allow modification for individual use. It's ok to prohibit redistribution as long as personal use/hacking is ok 3. One time payment is a lot more attractive to me than a subscription. I'm beginning to despise subscription software What are you thinking of making?
- adkadskhj 6y ago
  > One time payment is a lot more attractive to me than a subscription. I'm beginning to despise subscription software As an aside, i don't mind the middleground for subscription; buying once to own it, but getting updates for only 1 year. I've experienced this with TablePlus and DataGrid and it's been pleasant. I agree, i dislike subscriptions and i avoid them now. But i don't mind paying for updates at all. If anything it feels reasonable and inline with my desires as a consumer - continued support. Too many products i've bought feel abandoned in favor of an upcoming 2.0 to again get money out of me. Give me rolling evergreen releases with a sub-like, but let me own what i've bought so i can be sure it will always work for me. Seems like a good compromise to me.
  - ajford 6y ago
    Seconded. I dislike a forced-subscription model, but I'm definitely onboard with this type of hybrid model. Often times I go between jobs where a particular piece of software is no longer relevant to me, such as perhaps DataGrip from JetBrains. I occasionally have use for it again, but in general I'm no longer interacting with a rdbms anymore in my current role. Thanks to the hybrid subscription model, I can stop paying for the tool but keep my last 'lifetime' version as long as I care to use it. And if I pick up a job in the future that makes heavy use of it, I can re-evaluate whether it's worth subscribing for another term to get updates. In the same vain, I have an active sub for PyCharm (also from JetBrains) because as a Python dev, it makes a lot of sense for me to keep up with the new features as they continue to provide increasing value.
timClicks 6y ago
The snap store was specifically designed for commercial use cases, IIRC
NoOn3 6y ago
Maybe sell binaries for popular distribution.
jll29 6y ago
Since the discussion here is a lot about business model and package managers etc., I'll throw in two pieces of advice from the business side: §1. You want to make sure that your app solves a real problem well that users actually care about. This is easy to understand, but sadly many talented software people ignore the wisdom and pay dearly. It fair enough if you WANT to write yet another text editor or you WANT to write something in Go and you pick yet another password manager as an exercise. But to build a commercially successful product, you should do plan for success and not leave it to luck. What areas are underserved for Linux, what groups have the budget to purchase your program and also are actual Linux users? (How) can you reach them? §2. Develop apps that are better than the free apps. This isn't very hard for many areas, since there are a lot poor free applications out there. However, many app types are not "mission critical", which means you can live fine without using/having them at all. An example of a killer app was the spreadsheet app on the Apple II: people literally bought the machine to use the software. Of course there's a lot available today, so the bar for success is higher.
- bityard 6y ago
  I wish I could upvote this multiple times. If you want people to give you money for what you do, you have to _bring value_ to the table. Don't just put out something mildly interesting and then beg afterwards for donations of "support" from your non-existent community.
- shubhamharnal 6y ago
  This! In my case, connecting to enterprise's walled gardens, such as an Outlook Exchange server or Skype for Business, etc. typically don't have out-of-the-box solutions for consumers on linux. 2 apps I paid for are those for which I couldn't really find a nice/free alternative: 1. Hiri https://www.hiri.com/ https://www.hiri.com/ as I couldn't find a nice email client to work with Outlook Exchange 2. https://tel.red/linux.php https://tel.red/linux.php Skype for Business client for linux I think this category of apps have something going for them. I have since moved to WSL2 though and have found it to be a nice compromise for even serious work.
sliken 6y ago
Details matter, but without anything else to go on, I'd consider an open source projects, then sell a professionally managed service that makes it easy for customers to use. Of course include backups, patching, and support as part of the management. Projects like Piwigo (image editing, organizing and hosting) and SchedMD/Slurm are good examples. Generally it's MUCH easier to budget based on subscriptions, then playing the prediction game for which users will pay $x for feature Y.
gtf21 6y ago
I recently bought a copy of Pianoteq for Linux -- was very simple, I paid and received a license and a download link. Someone has already built a package for archlinux so I just had to point that at the downloaded file from modartt and away we go. Very simple.
TruthWillHurt 6y ago
More often than not I pay for software my business uses as a subscription. You could go for a "freemium" model where advanced features are payed-for, especially collaborative/multi-user ones, which will increase your userbase (individuals), that then recommend it to their company. Collaboration/backup/remote-state features are also easier to justify as payed feature because you will need to store and serve content from a central location.
haecceity 6y ago
Sell customer support and then get bought by IBM.
paxys 6y ago
The Linux phone and tablet market is still too underdeveloped and fragmented for a real answer here. There are several possible approaches for Linux apps on desktop, but that really depends on what you are building, who your target audience is etc.
bayindirh 6y ago
I use some paid applications on Linux: inSync, MATLAB, StarUML, Pagico, Spotify and Dropbox. Last two are maybe services but, they have clients which change capabilities with license level. If you want to sell me Linux software, provide a fair pricing model and provide a native app (Spotify is Electron but, it's not a bad offender). Also, please do not neglect your app just because it's on Linux. I don't like to feel neglected just because I use a free & open source OS. You'd kill my loyalty. Some of the applications are subscriptions, some are not. Some require paid upgrades, some do not. If I feel that your software worth the money you ask for, I'll pay for it, no questions asked. I think inSync, StarUML and Pagico has great pricing models. The other examples I have work as a subscription already. All of the applications I install (except MATLAB) comes as a .deb package. No frills. Plain .deb. Sometimes a repo is attached, which makes it nicer.
- mynegation 6y ago
  A bit of HN pedantry - Spotify uses CEF (Chrome Embedded Framework) and not Electron.
  - bayindirh 6y ago
    So this clarifies why it behaves better, thanks. Never had the time to dig/research it. Thanks again.
    - SahAssar 6y ago
      I don't think using CEF or Electron makes any difference. Some apps are just coded or structured better.
phendrenad2 6y ago
Linux phones are really taking off without a good app store? That doesn't sound plausible to me.
- swiley 6y ago
  Why would an app store be dealing breaking? Any service that you have to use offers a web page and good software (that doesn't abuse the users) ends up packaged and available in the OS repos.
- swebs 6y ago
  The usually come with the Gnome Software app store, which only provides free software. https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-software https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-software
_e 6y ago
Develop for cross platform. People have mentioned PyCharm which has the same user experience on Linux, Windows and MacOS.
opan 6y ago
One idea that I think could be interesting is to take jobs working on existing free software projects. Maybe a project has 150 open issues and someone is particularly bothered by one with no attention since 2018, so they're willing to pay for it to be fixed. This way you still make money (if you can find such deals/jobs) but you aren't locking out a share of users by charging everyone for a piece of software. I've seen a bit of this sort of dynamic on the omemo.top site, where you can see which XMPP clients have OMEMO support. In the case of clients lacking it, they link to open issues, and some show cash bounties on them. I care about free as in freedom more than free as in no cost, but I don't think I've used any paid software... pretty much in my whole life. Unless you count using MS Office or Photoshop in a school computer lab where the school had paid for licenses for all the machines. (and even then it was rare for me to use any non-gratis stuff)
amelius 6y ago
Make your software free to use by individuals and small companies, but require a payment from large companies (with e.g. >$1M revenue). This way you avoid being pirated too (large companies typically don't pirate).
- paxys 6y ago
  > large companies typically don't pirate Depends on the definition of pirate. If you publish software as "free for personal use only" I can bet it will still be very widely downloaded and used by employees at large corporations, if for no other reason than to not have to go through the purchasing approval process.
  - cmeacham98 6y ago
    Based on my experience working at large companies this is largely not true. Large companies will generally have a dedicated legal team with a relatively high amount of organizational influence, and this is such a massive and obvious potential liability they will make sure that nobody is using software without paying for it. I'm sure there are some exceptions, and those exceptions will likely no longer be exceptions after someone manages to figure out they're using their software illegally.
  - huhtenberg 6y ago
    Yep, that's the reality. We had a product that was free/paid based on home/work usage and the amount of "home" users coming from corporate IP spaces was absolutely staggering.
- xyzzy_plugh 6y ago
  Similar to the Unreal model. I've been thinking about this model a lot, and I love it, and I strongly believe it has a place in the future of software, but I don't know how it works in practice. What payment do you require? Unreal takes a percentage over your $1MM revenue, which works great for selling software, but how does it work for e.g. SaaS? Taking a cut is... unreasonable. Not to mention, it's unlikely businesses want to reveal their revenue. Do you charge a flat fee? Per seat? What about resellers?
eps 6y ago
It's a popular subject in the shareware/isv circles and the stable consensus is that it's a phenomenal pain in the ass. From the userbase being generally against the very idea of paying for software, to the complete clusterfuck of the package managers, the amount of effort required to sell and support native Linux apps is simply not worth the effort compared to even Macs, leave alone Windows. There are some highly visible exceptions, but they are just that - hard to reproduce flukes.
- xorcist 6y ago
  There has been commercial, non-free, software on Linux since the early days (editors, office suites, CAD software etc.). Generally they don't try to work with package managers or otherwise integrate too deeply with the operating system (because why would you?). Make it self contained and distribute in a tgz file. Don't try to make anything complicated. Look at the official release of Firefox for ideas.
  - m463 6y ago
    games do it. Take a look at https://www.gog.com/ https://www.gog.com/ There are a surprising number of native linux games. They tend to be compiled for ubuntu, but probably work on other distributions
    - nyolfen 6y ago
      this is basically an ephiphenomenon of cross-platform game design frameworks, though (not to mention steam proton); not many game devs set out with the primary intention of supporting linux, and many fail to maintain it
- le-mark 6y ago
  After the Joel on software forums closed, where do shareware/isv folks congregate nowadays (if you don’t mind sharing)?
  - Fudgel 6y ago
lucb1e 6y ago
Since I have no experience with GNU/Linux phones (only Android/Linux) but you're also interested in desktop answers: just look at what other paid software does that runs on Linux. When I go to sublimetext.com I just click buy and it gives me the option of paying for it with credit card or paypal. Or Atlassian's on-prem option: you just go to the site, pay for it, then get what you paid for. Keep it simple, no need for anything novel. Another example is factorio: again just an up front cost (though they should have offered at least the option to pay towards upkeep costs because they do a superb job and the game is already really "done" and they keep releasing more and more minor features for free). If it's a subscription, the ongoing cost really needs to be worth it to me. I might donate much more easily than take a subscription, for example I pledged iirc 1% of K-9's (the email client) funding goal for a few months because I would like to get it out of its current stuck position even if I don't believe we need a person on an already-perfectly-functional email client working full time all the time. (I suppose here's at least one app example, though donations are of course not a business model. Then again, this is also about open source software, not a commercial app.) Paid support would be interesting pretty much exclusively to businesses, from my experience. In general I'd like to say that good support is worth money also for private people, but looking at how often I've paid out of pocket for software support of any kind... After buying a product I just expect it to work, and if it doesn't, then either they fix it or I get the money back and stop being a customer. Feature requests would be something to pay for, but then the rates of that compared to spending a few hours hacking it together myself are again not worth it. You'd need some sort of crowdfunding model where people pledge together towards features, and I fear that might be over-engineering it.
qbasic_forever 6y ago
Make a living off it? Write the app in a framework that lets you one click compile and build for Android and iOS too. That's the truth.
tpoacher 6y ago
The bad news is, there's no single way to package your product. The good news is, nobody cares, as long as what you choose works. Also, linux users arent averse to paying for software. They simply expect their software to be respectful. That most paid software also historically happened to be disrespectful is more of a historical accident.
mhitza 6y ago
Crowdfunding, freemium, support, hosted/managed services, pay to download binary. Different projects have different practices. If your project brings enough value, you'll definitely get people thay pay for it. But for small software ("apps"), I personally don't see a market anymore outside of mobile.
deleted 6y ago
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charcircuit 6y ago
The software I buy on Linux is pretty much all through Steam. Other than that I have the annual subscription for all of Jetbrain's IDEs.
Railsify 6y ago
Sell to corporations.
swiley 6y ago
You sell support and maintenance contracts. That's how busybox and the kernel get maintained. End user software gets written by the users themselves, business software is written by consultants. Most of the users are willing to pay not to use closed software. Also the distribution channels aren't anything like app stores. They're usually a repo maintained by the community and you work with them to package your software ex: https://gitlab.alpinelinux.org/alpine/aports https://gitlab.alpinelinux.org/alpine/aports If you want to push corporate garbage like most iOS apps at people just build web pages.
pabs3 6y ago
There are lots of companies with jobs in open source and other ways to make money from open source: https://www.fossjobs.net/ https://www.fossjobs.net/ https://github.com/fossjobs/fossjobs/wiki/resources https://github.com/fossjobs/fossjobs/wiki/resources
happyjack 6y ago
Man, I've been running Linux on a desktop (on and off, mostly on) since 2009 and I haven't ever paid for an application. Sure, I've paid support / development applications, have donated $, and have paid for SAAS, but never a standalone application. I'm not trying to discourage you or anything of the sorts. Just seller beware of your market and target audience. I saw a comment below on self contained .tar. I think that's a really smart way to go. Or, make it Debian / LTS Ubuntu and a RHEL package. Support the big two. If anyone runs arch or something like that make them compile it themselves or ldd the binary.
- happyjack 6y ago
  This is probably my favorite (besides an official repo) way that I have gotten software on Linux. It's worked on every system I've run in the past 5 years (RHEL, Debian, Ubuntu, etc.). https://www.zotero.org/download/ https://www.zotero.org/download/
- swebs 6y ago
  Even games on Steam?
  - happyjack 6y ago
    I have no experience with Steam :( since I don't game. I'm sure it's a great platform, though!
renewiltord 6y ago
The only apps I pay for on Linux are cross platform apps. Usually Linux specific apps have good open alternatives. The Ubuntu App Store has sell functionality but I never buy from it. I buy direct from the vendor. I’m a 20 year Linux user now and I haven’t met in real life anyone who acts differently as a Linux user.
hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
Take this for what it's worth, but virtually every example I see here is for applications that are supported on Linux, but certainly not specifically targeted towards Linux. Looking through the comments I see Jetbrains apps (which are built in Java and designed to be cross-platform), Steam, Sublime, Spotify, Dropbox, etc. I can guarantee all of those apps make the vast majority of their money from paying Mac and Windows customers, and they either offer a Linux version because they can afford to for essentially developer goodwill, or there is an interoperability story (e.g. a Dropbox user may use Mac most of the time, but needs it to manage some shared storage on all of their machines, including some Linux ones). Perhaps one exception I could see to this is highly technical or engineering focused software (e.g. Matlab, CAD software), but that software is largely paid for by large organizations like companies and universities. HN folks may not like to hear it, but in general your "average" Linux user makes the absolute worst software customer: they can get tons of stuff for free so there is a high bar when it comes to willingness to pay for non-free software, they have very high demands about how software should work, and they are most likely to run customer configurations on different combinations of hardware, making bugs more likely, and they are usually quickest to switch if something better comes along. And by the way, calling someone a "bad customer" is not really a putdown; being highly discerning about where one spends their money is more of a compliment.
- 3np 6y ago
  I absolutely think that there’s currently an untapped market for paid software where as part of the deal you get the source code (obv preferable libre but could do shared source) I can’t be the only one who got to the point where I simply won’t trust closed source binaries on my devices if I can avoid it, and would happily pay just to be able to verify that there’s no shenanigans going on. Realized this as I tried finding an email client for iOS - save from the stock one there’s just nothing out there where I have any idea what’s actually happening to my data. There is no norm or culture for business model, payment structure or payment mechanisms for this right now - am I alone or are we a larger untapped market waiting to be captured?
  - tonyedgecombe 6y ago
jayp1418 6y ago
Well if you are focusing earning from desktop users check Elementary OS app store they have options to charge for app similar model to Apple's store. If your target audience is developers or corporate check this license and their parent project https://prosperitylicense.com/ https://prosperitylicense.com/
vram22 6y ago
There was a site specifically for selling Linux apps called linapp.com or so, that I had seen now and then for some years, but on a check now, it seems gone or down. They had products priced from tens to thousands of dollars.
- vram22 6y ago
  While checking for it, I found this review of it, which praises it on many points: LinApp - Most Comprehensive Collection Of Commercial Linux Applications I Have Ever Seen: https://www.techdrivein.com/2010/08/linapp-most-comprehensive-collection-of.html?m=1 https://www.techdrivein.com/2010/08/linapp-most-comprehensiv...
engneeer 6y ago
This(https://build-system.fman.io/ https://build-system.fman.io/) looks interesting for building and distributing cross platform python-applications. Didn’t test it yet.
pacifika 6y ago
Sounds like there's a market for tooling to sell to app developers on linux, but not so much a market for selling linux apps.
suchoudh 6y ago
IMHO the bottleneck is non-availability of Linux phones and tablets. Once this is sorted out people will be willing to switch to them Somehow the availability ( I am in India) is just not there as of now.

herbst 6y ago

Ubuntu has a store, Steam allows (any/game related?) software, Itch/Humble are kinda common (again kinda gaming related) But buying little apps is simply not common on linux. Sure many would but why when you can just apt an easily alternative. If you produce niche or major software subscription, buying licenses and co are more common anyway.

sylvain_kerkour 6y ago
Thank you! I completely forgot that Steam is not for games only.
- deleted 6y ago
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- deleted 6y ago
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loloquwowndueo 6y ago
Note though that the Ubuntu store is only for discovery, it doesn’t have any support for paid applications. It did, but this was deprecated a couple of years ago as the then Ubuntu store service started changing to accommodate snaps. Paid applications do exist but they must implement their own post-installation payment mechanism - the snap store doesn’t provide any facilities for this.
simulo 6y ago
Most what steam offers is game related, but the categories they have are rather broad, one of them being "utilities".
gnulinux 6y ago
> But buying little apps is simply not common on linux. Sure many would but why when you can just apt an easily alternative. Because I want to pay people to write good software for me. I hate using OSX and Windows, but I want to have a DAW like Logic etc. My only options are stuff like Ardour, which happen not to work on my computer (because linux audio system is broken) due to alsa/jack/pulseaudio weirdness. And I have no leverage over Ardour developers. All I can do is: * Look online to find solutions to my problem. This didn't lead anywhere. * Download Ardour code and understand how it connects to the audio device and reproduce it, this way I can see the error. Luckily I can read code, most consumers can't. * Send a message to Ardour devs/forums and cross fingers they help me out. I want a company that produces software like MSFT, AAPL, Adobe etc and make it linux first and GPL. I understand that this is a terrible business model, which is why I want to pay extra money for this shit. Like Logic on OSX is $200. I want to pay $300 something that's approximately like that but works on my distro as flawlessly as Logic works on OSX. I just want to not read pulse audio man files when I need a DAW, in exchange for $X * $200. I'm just daydreaming, I know this stuff will never happen. I'm not sure exactly why. I hate the modern software ecosystem.
- pta2002 6y ago
  Reaper is absolutely amazing, works on Linux just fine (natively! And supports LV2 plugins) and it's only $60 (and the demo version is a WinRar-like "I'm still using it" button). It's also a completely no-bullshit approach to software development, no subscriptions, nothing like that. Buy the license once, and upgrade to a commercial license (which is still less than the price of something like Ableton or Logic) if you are using it to make more than something like $20k. It's proprietary, but it's completely customizable, even coming with its own scripting engine. I think you should give it a shot, GPL is the only thing missing from your list of requirements, but it's also made by a small independent team that doesn't do the usual crap associated with bigger apps. A good alternative to JACK and PulseAudio is PipeWire, which for me has worked basically completely flawlessly and supports JACK and PulseAudio bridges natively.
  - gnulinux 6y ago
    Sounds good, I'll check it out. I was mostly giving DAW as an example though, same would go to any kind of specialized software. EDIT: unrelated but, from Reaper purchase page: > If you own multiple computers, you may install the same license key on all of them, as long as you only use REAPER on one computer at a time. I love this, let's not pretend people have a single computer. A have multiple linux workstations, and an OSX workstation. As long as it's me, the person who bought it, is using the software on different machines, I should be able to get away with single license.

tubularhells 6y ago

Ask the developers of Insync, UKUU and Aseprite. They sell licences via their sites, with activation codes or Google authentication. But if you want to make a living, I suggest making a Linux phone oriented application store first and foremost, and figuring out the DRM that way. Developers will come if an ecosystem is built for easy deployments and selling software.

wesamco 6y ago

Sublime HQ Pty Ltd, developers of Sublime Text and Sublime Merge sell licenses and use the package managers of each distro and host their own package mirror. > Sublime Text 3 includes an auto-upgrade mechanism on Windows and OS X to make upgrades a snap. Instead of going against the grain of the Linux ecosystem, packages and package repositories are provided for most of the major distributions. https://www.sublimetext.com/docs/3/linux_repositories.html https://www.sublimetext.com/docs/3/linux_repositories.html

woodruffw 6y ago
Speaking as an end user: I deeply appreciate this particular approach. Sublime is one of the few {paid,proprietary} applications that I use on Linux; being able to install it with my normal package manager reduces my cognitive overhead and keeps me reassured that updates do indeed go through.
- na85 6y ago
  Interesting. Does Sublime come with the source (how is it licensed?) when you purchase it?
  - skadamat 6y ago
    I believe Sublime's source is open source but not for re-selling. You can use it 100% free but it has a popup asking you to upgrade to a license once every few weeks or so.
    - oblio 6y ago
      It's not open source, did they change that?
    - nicoburns 6y ago
      This is incorrect. Sublime's source code isn't published at all (or even leaked). You are correct that you have use it for free with a nag window, although this is against the license beyond an unspecified "evaluation period".

brudgers 6y ago

Make something useful for Linux users. TurboPrint is an example of Linux software I have bought. It's more capable than CUPS for my use case. It solves a known problem. It sells via a website. Makes enough money to have been around a long time and charges enough to stay up to date. It is also in a market segment that is orders of magnitude larger than Linux phones an tablets are ever likely to achieve. Good luck.

orta 6y ago

elementary OS has an App Store: https://developer.elementary.io https://developer.elementary.io I'm not sure if it'd be big enough to get you doing it full time though.

turbinerneiter 6y ago

I'd really wish for a paid app store on Linux to be more common, especially for open source apps. Make it a monthly recurring donation even, but send me a proper bill for bookkeeping.

TitanXen 6y ago
Look into the app store made by the elementary os team. It is very similar to what you wish for.

vbsteven 6y ago

Support or service subscriptions are probably your best bet. The only software I have paid for on my Linux machines is IntelliJ.

dec0dedab0de 6y ago

You can follow all the same techniques that software companies on other OSes use, for example I bought Pycharm to use on linux, and its no different than anywhere else. Steam also runs on linux. If you want to be OpenSource and sell your apps there are a few different ways. You could not provide any official downloads unless they pay, your paying customers could legally redistribute your code, but only you would have the official source. You could charge for binaries and provide code free of charge like Ardour. You could also sell support contracts, so paying gives them an offical account to ask questions on the forum or a number to call in. But either way its the same as windows or mac, the only reason most non free software companies don't sell linux software is because there are less users, and they don't want to deal with making sure it works.

edgyquant 6y ago
This is unrelated but I love PyCharm and have only switched recently. I just wish there was an obvious way to open a terminal in window like on VSCode, there may be and I just don’t know it, but alt tabbing works fine for now
- sedeki 6y ago
  There is a terminal tab at the bottom of PyCharm.
- calmoo 6y ago
  Terminal windows are built into Pycharm. They also automatically open with the project's virtualenv for each terminal instance which is great.
- shagie 6y ago
  The documentation on the part of PyCharm: https://www.jetbrains.com/help/pycharm/terminal-emulator.html https://www.jetbrains.com/help/pycharm/terminal-emulator.htm... One of the neat things with JetBrains IDEs is the 'help' menu. More than once I've done a "go to that menu and just start typing what I'm looking for" Typing 'terminal' in that menu and then selecting the spot where it can be accessed from brings up the appropriate menu - https://i.imgur.com/Z3u4grB.png https://i.imgur.com/Z3u4grB.png Also, for me (there may be some other settings that I've got from other installs), at the bottom bar, left hand side the defaults are: "TODO", "Problems", "Terminal", and "Python Console". Selecting "Terminal" will launch a default shell. The "Python Console" brings up an interactive mode REPL. And yes, there is a lot of tooling in JetBrains IDEs that are... in days of old it would be "here's a 300 page manual that no one reads." The Help Menu is incredibly useful for finding things - even experienced users. https://i.imgur.com/4duykxh.png https://i.imgur.com/4duykxh.png - the IDE Features Trainer and Productivity Guide are really useful for discovery.

burtonator 6y ago

I'm about to get downvoted to oblivion but the solution here is don't sell apps on Linux. People on Linux don't pay for apps. Target a platform like iOS where users are willing to pay for apps. 85% of total app store volume across iOS and Android is from iOS.

bscphil 6y ago
Not going to downvote you, but if you are downvoted it's probably because this isn't true. Take the video game market as an example; people are very much willing to pay for video games on Linux (via Humble Bundle, Itch, Steam, or GoG) even when the games are usually DRM-free and could trivially be pirated. If there's not much of a market in other areas, then frankly I'd have to say it's because the open source ecosystem is simply too good on Linux. There's already an app that can do what you want for 99% of use cases, and it's open source and free. Hard to compete with that. You wouldn't criticize Windows because someone can't find anyone to buy their web browser; Linux is like that, just for most every application.
- pjmlp 6y ago
  It is hardly enough to sustain a business, the other platforms are the ones that keep the lights on.
- happyjack 6y ago
  I largely agree with this. LibreOffice is great, Octave is great, Firefox / Chrome, GIMP, etc. There are already a ton of free and great applications on Linux.
_trampeltier 6y ago
I'm not a Linux user because it does cost me nothing. I even have a couple of unused Win Pro licences around here. I'm a Linux user because I like my private freedom.
pavlov 6y ago
JetBrains does about $300M annual revenue, and a substantial portion of that is from Linux users. Clearly people on Linux do pay for desktop apps if they offer enough value.

devenblake 6y ago

>How to make a living creating apps for Linux, whether it be for the Desktop or the phones? I want to phrase this with as much hostility as possible: Don't. Software cannot be owned or paid for and any attempt to normalize the opposite is cruel to anybody with a functioning brain. You cannot own a thought, or data, or bits or bytes, and much of the software you will no doubt use to create your premium software was made with this philosophy. If you want to solicit donations that's very cool and there are people who will donate to you. But any attempt to abridge access to code without mandatory payment is not only ridiculous but purely unethical. (and no, I don't care how many HN points I lose by saying this)

tsegers 6y ago
> and much of the software you will no doubt use to create your premium software was made with this philosophy. Even the FSF considers selling software a good thing [1] [1] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html
fctorial 6y ago
> I don't care how many HN points I lose by saying this 5 at most
jraph 6y ago
You can ethically sell a service with your libre software.
oblio 6y ago
You're literally against people making a living developing software for Linux...
jldugger 6y ago
> But any attempt to abridge access to code without mandatory payment is not only ridiculous but purely unethical Is it ethical to pay someone to create software that wouldn't otherwise exist? Is it ethical to create the software and then refuse to deliver it until the check clears? Is it ethical for a semiretired hacker in the US to build a 1 person SaaS company around software written by someone making do with ten dollars a day in the phillipines without sending them a dime?

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

inetknght 6y ago

I am both a developer for and user of Linux. Paid-for software is best distributed using your own repository. @wesamco's comment describes how Sublime Text is distributed and it works well. Other paid-for softwares have similar success. I use Synergy. To install, I need to download a pre-built application. When it runs it will ask for a license key. I type in the license key and it goes and verifies it. Both solutions solve different problems. The repository solves package management: installation, versioning, and dependency chains. License keys ensure that the software is paid for.

nly 6y ago
As someone who used to work on Synergy I can assure you that building a .deb or .rpm that works across as many distros as possible is a royal pita. Around about the time I was working on it half the distros users wanted to use were on OpenSSL 1.0 and the other half on 1.1.1. even Debian and Ubuntu were split due to their release cycles being different. Also, Linux support was never a priority for the company. You should probably save your money and just use Barrier, a FOSS fork.
- inetknght 6y ago
  > As someone who used to work on Synergy I can assure you that building a .deb or .rpm that works across as many distros as possible is a royal pita. I don't disagree. > You should probably save your money and just use Barrier, a FOSS fork. Synergy has worked for my needs and so I paid for it. How does Barrier differ?
  - nly 6y ago
    > How does Barrier differ? The people who work on it give a damn

pjmlp 6y ago

The only way is to force the users to pay via Web applications and SaaS services, really.

ris 6y ago

Artificial scarcity is an absurd and broken model. Please don't put yourself or your prospective users through that nonsense.

oblio 6y ago
What artificial scarcity?
jonahbenton 6y ago
IOW, duh, FIRST solve the artificial scarcity of food and housing, THEN write free as in beer/license software. Stop doing it wrong. /sarcasm
arcturus17 6y ago
Aspiring to pay your bills by whatever legal means you deem appropriate is a fantastic model though, and I thoroughly commend OP for trying.

zamalek 6y ago

Softmaker have a free version and a pro version. The former is available in the public proprietary repos (for Arch, at least). The latter is a download and requires an activation key. Their free version converted me into a paying customer.

freedomben 6y ago

I'm a long time Linux user who buys software. If you want me to buy it, these are the things you should do: 1. Provide an RPM repo or COPR repo I can add so it is managed with dnf. You'll also want to provide .deb too 2. Make source available with payment, and allow modification for individual use. It's ok to prohibit redistribution as long as personal use/hacking is ok 3. One time payment is a lot more attractive to me than a subscription. I'm beginning to despise subscription software What are you thinking of making?

adkadskhj 6y ago
> One time payment is a lot more attractive to me than a subscription. I'm beginning to despise subscription software As an aside, i don't mind the middleground for subscription; buying once to own it, but getting updates for only 1 year. I've experienced this with TablePlus and DataGrid and it's been pleasant. I agree, i dislike subscriptions and i avoid them now. But i don't mind paying for updates at all. If anything it feels reasonable and inline with my desires as a consumer - continued support. Too many products i've bought feel abandoned in favor of an upcoming 2.0 to again get money out of me. Give me rolling evergreen releases with a sub-like, but let me own what i've bought so i can be sure it will always work for me. Seems like a good compromise to me.
- ajford 6y ago
  Seconded. I dislike a forced-subscription model, but I'm definitely onboard with this type of hybrid model. Often times I go between jobs where a particular piece of software is no longer relevant to me, such as perhaps DataGrip from JetBrains. I occasionally have use for it again, but in general I'm no longer interacting with a rdbms anymore in my current role. Thanks to the hybrid subscription model, I can stop paying for the tool but keep my last 'lifetime' version as long as I care to use it. And if I pick up a job in the future that makes heavy use of it, I can re-evaluate whether it's worth subscribing for another term to get updates. In the same vain, I have an active sub for PyCharm (also from JetBrains) because as a Python dev, it makes a lot of sense for me to keep up with the new features as they continue to provide increasing value.

timClicks 6y ago

The snap store was specifically designed for commercial use cases, IIRC

NoOn3 6y ago

Maybe sell binaries for popular distribution.

jll29 6y ago

Since the discussion here is a lot about business model and package managers etc., I'll throw in two pieces of advice from the business side: §1. You want to make sure that your app solves a real problem well that users actually care about. This is easy to understand, but sadly many talented software people ignore the wisdom and pay dearly. It fair enough if you WANT to write yet another text editor or you WANT to write something in Go and you pick yet another password manager as an exercise. But to build a commercially successful product, you should do plan for success and not leave it to luck. What areas are underserved for Linux, what groups have the budget to purchase your program and also are actual Linux users? (How) can you reach them? §2. Develop apps that are better than the free apps. This isn't very hard for many areas, since there are a lot poor free applications out there. However, many app types are not "mission critical", which means you can live fine without using/having them at all. An example of a killer app was the spreadsheet app on the Apple II: people literally bought the machine to use the software. Of course there's a lot available today, so the bar for success is higher.

bityard 6y ago
I wish I could upvote this multiple times. If you want people to give you money for what you do, you have to _bring value_ to the table. Don't just put out something mildly interesting and then beg afterwards for donations of "support" from your non-existent community.
shubhamharnal 6y ago
This! In my case, connecting to enterprise's walled gardens, such as an Outlook Exchange server or Skype for Business, etc. typically don't have out-of-the-box solutions for consumers on linux. 2 apps I paid for are those for which I couldn't really find a nice/free alternative: 1. Hiri https://www.hiri.com/ https://www.hiri.com/ as I couldn't find a nice email client to work with Outlook Exchange 2. https://tel.red/linux.php https://tel.red/linux.php Skype for Business client for linux I think this category of apps have something going for them. I have since moved to WSL2 though and have found it to be a nice compromise for even serious work.

sliken 6y ago

Details matter, but without anything else to go on, I'd consider an open source projects, then sell a professionally managed service that makes it easy for customers to use. Of course include backups, patching, and support as part of the management. Projects like Piwigo (image editing, organizing and hosting) and SchedMD/Slurm are good examples. Generally it's MUCH easier to budget based on subscriptions, then playing the prediction game for which users will pay $x for feature Y.

gtf21 6y ago

I recently bought a copy of Pianoteq for Linux -- was very simple, I paid and received a license and a download link. Someone has already built a package for archlinux so I just had to point that at the downloaded file from modartt and away we go. Very simple.

TruthWillHurt 6y ago

More often than not I pay for software my business uses as a subscription. You could go for a "freemium" model where advanced features are payed-for, especially collaborative/multi-user ones, which will increase your userbase (individuals), that then recommend it to their company. Collaboration/backup/remote-state features are also easier to justify as payed feature because you will need to store and serve content from a central location.

haecceity 6y ago

Sell customer support and then get bought by IBM.

paxys 6y ago

The Linux phone and tablet market is still too underdeveloped and fragmented for a real answer here. There are several possible approaches for Linux apps on desktop, but that really depends on what you are building, who your target audience is etc.

bayindirh 6y ago

I use some paid applications on Linux: inSync, MATLAB, StarUML, Pagico, Spotify and Dropbox. Last two are maybe services but, they have clients which change capabilities with license level. If you want to sell me Linux software, provide a fair pricing model and provide a native app (Spotify is Electron but, it's not a bad offender). Also, please do not neglect your app just because it's on Linux. I don't like to feel neglected just because I use a free & open source OS. You'd kill my loyalty. Some of the applications are subscriptions, some are not. Some require paid upgrades, some do not. If I feel that your software worth the money you ask for, I'll pay for it, no questions asked. I think inSync, StarUML and Pagico has great pricing models. The other examples I have work as a subscription already. All of the applications I install (except MATLAB) comes as a .deb package. No frills. Plain .deb. Sometimes a repo is attached, which makes it nicer.

mynegation 6y ago
A bit of HN pedantry - Spotify uses CEF (Chrome Embedded Framework) and not Electron.
- bayindirh 6y ago
  So this clarifies why it behaves better, thanks. Never had the time to dig/research it. Thanks again.
  - SahAssar 6y ago
    I don't think using CEF or Electron makes any difference. Some apps are just coded or structured better.

phendrenad2 6y ago

Linux phones are really taking off without a good app store? That doesn't sound plausible to me.

swiley 6y ago
Why would an app store be dealing breaking? Any service that you have to use offers a web page and good software (that doesn't abuse the users) ends up packaged and available in the OS repos.
swebs 6y ago
The usually come with the Gnome Software app store, which only provides free software. https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-software https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-software

_e 6y ago

Develop for cross platform. People have mentioned PyCharm which has the same user experience on Linux, Windows and MacOS.

opan 6y ago

One idea that I think could be interesting is to take jobs working on existing free software projects. Maybe a project has 150 open issues and someone is particularly bothered by one with no attention since 2018, so they're willing to pay for it to be fixed. This way you still make money (if you can find such deals/jobs) but you aren't locking out a share of users by charging everyone for a piece of software. I've seen a bit of this sort of dynamic on the omemo.top site, where you can see which XMPP clients have OMEMO support. In the case of clients lacking it, they link to open issues, and some show cash bounties on them. I care about free as in freedom more than free as in no cost, but I don't think I've used any paid software... pretty much in my whole life. Unless you count using MS Office or Photoshop in a school computer lab where the school had paid for licenses for all the machines. (and even then it was rare for me to use any non-gratis stuff)

amelius 6y ago

Make your software free to use by individuals and small companies, but require a payment from large companies (with e.g. >$1M revenue). This way you avoid being pirated too (large companies typically don't pirate).

paxys 6y ago
> large companies typically don't pirate Depends on the definition of pirate. If you publish software as "free for personal use only" I can bet it will still be very widely downloaded and used by employees at large corporations, if for no other reason than to not have to go through the purchasing approval process.
- cmeacham98 6y ago
  Based on my experience working at large companies this is largely not true. Large companies will generally have a dedicated legal team with a relatively high amount of organizational influence, and this is such a massive and obvious potential liability they will make sure that nobody is using software without paying for it. I'm sure there are some exceptions, and those exceptions will likely no longer be exceptions after someone manages to figure out they're using their software illegally.
- huhtenberg 6y ago
  Yep, that's the reality. We had a product that was free/paid based on home/work usage and the amount of "home" users coming from corporate IP spaces was absolutely staggering.
xyzzy_plugh 6y ago
Similar to the Unreal model. I've been thinking about this model a lot, and I love it, and I strongly believe it has a place in the future of software, but I don't know how it works in practice. What payment do you require? Unreal takes a percentage over your $1MM revenue, which works great for selling software, but how does it work for e.g. SaaS? Taking a cut is... unreasonable. Not to mention, it's unlikely businesses want to reveal their revenue. Do you charge a flat fee? Per seat? What about resellers?

eps 6y ago

It's a popular subject in the shareware/isv circles and the stable consensus is that it's a phenomenal pain in the ass. From the userbase being generally against the very idea of paying for software, to the complete clusterfuck of the package managers, the amount of effort required to sell and support native Linux apps is simply not worth the effort compared to even Macs, leave alone Windows. There are some highly visible exceptions, but they are just that - hard to reproduce flukes.

xorcist 6y ago
There has been commercial, non-free, software on Linux since the early days (editors, office suites, CAD software etc.). Generally they don't try to work with package managers or otherwise integrate too deeply with the operating system (because why would you?). Make it self contained and distribute in a tgz file. Don't try to make anything complicated. Look at the official release of Firefox for ideas.
- m463 6y ago
  games do it. Take a look at https://www.gog.com/ https://www.gog.com/ There are a surprising number of native linux games. They tend to be compiled for ubuntu, but probably work on other distributions
  - nyolfen 6y ago
    this is basically an ephiphenomenon of cross-platform game design frameworks, though (not to mention steam proton); not many game devs set out with the primary intention of supporting linux, and many fail to maintain it
le-mark 6y ago
After the Joel on software forums closed, where do shareware/isv folks congregate nowadays (if you don’t mind sharing)?
- Fudgel 6y ago

lucb1e 6y ago

Since I have no experience with GNU/Linux phones (only Android/Linux) but you're also interested in desktop answers: just look at what other paid software does that runs on Linux. When I go to sublimetext.com I just click buy and it gives me the option of paying for it with credit card or paypal. Or Atlassian's on-prem option: you just go to the site, pay for it, then get what you paid for. Keep it simple, no need for anything novel. Another example is factorio: again just an up front cost (though they should have offered at least the option to pay towards upkeep costs because they do a superb job and the game is already really "done" and they keep releasing more and more minor features for free). If it's a subscription, the ongoing cost really needs to be worth it to me. I might donate much more easily than take a subscription, for example I pledged iirc 1% of K-9's (the email client) funding goal for a few months because I would like to get it out of its current stuck position even if I don't believe we need a person on an already-perfectly-functional email client working full time all the time. (I suppose here's at least one app example, though donations are of course not a business model. Then again, this is also about open source software, not a commercial app.) Paid support would be interesting pretty much exclusively to businesses, from my experience. In general I'd like to say that good support is worth money also for private people, but looking at how often I've paid out of pocket for software support of any kind... After buying a product I just expect it to work, and if it doesn't, then either they fix it or I get the money back and stop being a customer. Feature requests would be something to pay for, but then the rates of that compared to spending a few hours hacking it together myself are again not worth it. You'd need some sort of crowdfunding model where people pledge together towards features, and I fear that might be over-engineering it.

qbasic_forever 6y ago

Make a living off it? Write the app in a framework that lets you one click compile and build for Android and iOS too. That's the truth.

tpoacher 6y ago

The bad news is, there's no single way to package your product. The good news is, nobody cares, as long as what you choose works. Also, linux users arent averse to paying for software. They simply expect their software to be respectful. That most paid software also historically happened to be disrespectful is more of a historical accident.

mhitza 6y ago

Crowdfunding, freemium, support, hosted/managed services, pay to download binary. Different projects have different practices. If your project brings enough value, you'll definitely get people thay pay for it. But for small software ("apps"), I personally don't see a market anymore outside of mobile.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

charcircuit 6y ago

The software I buy on Linux is pretty much all through Steam. Other than that I have the annual subscription for all of Jetbrain's IDEs.

Railsify 6y ago

Sell to corporations.

swiley 6y ago

You sell support and maintenance contracts. That's how busybox and the kernel get maintained. End user software gets written by the users themselves, business software is written by consultants. Most of the users are willing to pay not to use closed software. Also the distribution channels aren't anything like app stores. They're usually a repo maintained by the community and you work with them to package your software ex: https://gitlab.alpinelinux.org/alpine/aports https://gitlab.alpinelinux.org/alpine/aports If you want to push corporate garbage like most iOS apps at people just build web pages.

pabs3 6y ago

There are lots of companies with jobs in open source and other ways to make money from open source: https://www.fossjobs.net/ https://www.fossjobs.net/ https://github.com/fossjobs/fossjobs/wiki/resources https://github.com/fossjobs/fossjobs/wiki/resources

happyjack 6y ago

Man, I've been running Linux on a desktop (on and off, mostly on) since 2009 and I haven't ever paid for an application. Sure, I've paid support / development applications, have donated $, and have paid for SAAS, but never a standalone application. I'm not trying to discourage you or anything of the sorts. Just seller beware of your market and target audience. I saw a comment below on self contained .tar. I think that's a really smart way to go. Or, make it Debian / LTS Ubuntu and a RHEL package. Support the big two. If anyone runs arch or something like that make them compile it themselves or ldd the binary.

happyjack 6y ago
This is probably my favorite (besides an official repo) way that I have gotten software on Linux. It's worked on every system I've run in the past 5 years (RHEL, Debian, Ubuntu, etc.). https://www.zotero.org/download/ https://www.zotero.org/download/
swebs 6y ago
Even games on Steam?
- happyjack 6y ago
  I have no experience with Steam :( since I don't game. I'm sure it's a great platform, though!

renewiltord 6y ago

The only apps I pay for on Linux are cross platform apps. Usually Linux specific apps have good open alternatives. The Ubuntu App Store has sell functionality but I never buy from it. I buy direct from the vendor. I’m a 20 year Linux user now and I haven’t met in real life anyone who acts differently as a Linux user.

hn_throwaway_99 6y ago

Take this for what it's worth, but virtually every example I see here is for applications that are supported on Linux, but certainly not specifically targeted towards Linux. Looking through the comments I see Jetbrains apps (which are built in Java and designed to be cross-platform), Steam, Sublime, Spotify, Dropbox, etc. I can guarantee all of those apps make the vast majority of their money from paying Mac and Windows customers, and they either offer a Linux version because they can afford to for essentially developer goodwill, or there is an interoperability story (e.g. a Dropbox user may use Mac most of the time, but needs it to manage some shared storage on all of their machines, including some Linux ones). Perhaps one exception I could see to this is highly technical or engineering focused software (e.g. Matlab, CAD software), but that software is largely paid for by large organizations like companies and universities. HN folks may not like to hear it, but in general your "average" Linux user makes the absolute worst software customer: they can get tons of stuff for free so there is a high bar when it comes to willingness to pay for non-free software, they have very high demands about how software should work, and they are most likely to run customer configurations on different combinations of hardware, making bugs more likely, and they are usually quickest to switch if something better comes along. And by the way, calling someone a "bad customer" is not really a putdown; being highly discerning about where one spends their money is more of a compliment.

3np 6y ago
I absolutely think that there’s currently an untapped market for paid software where as part of the deal you get the source code (obv preferable libre but could do shared source) I can’t be the only one who got to the point where I simply won’t trust closed source binaries on my devices if I can avoid it, and would happily pay just to be able to verify that there’s no shenanigans going on. Realized this as I tried finding an email client for iOS - save from the stock one there’s just nothing out there where I have any idea what’s actually happening to my data. There is no norm or culture for business model, payment structure or payment mechanisms for this right now - am I alone or are we a larger untapped market waiting to be captured?
- tonyedgecombe 6y ago

jayp1418 6y ago

Well if you are focusing earning from desktop users check Elementary OS app store they have options to charge for app similar model to Apple's store. If your target audience is developers or corporate check this license and their parent project https://prosperitylicense.com/ https://prosperitylicense.com/

vram22 6y ago

There was a site specifically for selling Linux apps called linapp.com or so, that I had seen now and then for some years, but on a check now, it seems gone or down. They had products priced from tens to thousands of dollars.

vram22 6y ago
While checking for it, I found this review of it, which praises it on many points: LinApp - Most Comprehensive Collection Of Commercial Linux Applications I Have Ever Seen: https://www.techdrivein.com/2010/08/linapp-most-comprehensive-collection-of.html?m=1 https://www.techdrivein.com/2010/08/linapp-most-comprehensiv...

engneeer 6y ago

This(https://build-system.fman.io/ https://build-system.fman.io/) looks interesting for building and distributing cross platform python-applications. Didn’t test it yet.

pacifika 6y ago

Sounds like there's a market for tooling to sell to app developers on linux, but not so much a market for selling linux apps.

suchoudh 6y ago

IMHO the bottleneck is non-availability of Linux phones and tablets. Once this is sorted out people will be willing to switch to them Somehow the availability ( I am in India) is just not there as of now.