I think that technical hurdles absolutely matter, even more so at the current scale of elementary. And offering apps that are neither sandboxed nor auditable so

I think that technical hurdles absolutely matter, even more so at the current scale of elementary. And offering apps that are neither sandboxed nor auditable sounds like a PR disaster waiting to happen once someone steals Bitcoin wallets. Thankfully, the kernel of apps that work across distributions is slowly coming together over at flathub, which is planning to add payment support: https://github.com/flathub/flathub/issues/680 https://github.com/flathub/flathub/issues/680 Even the KDE-based Steam Deck, on the opposite end of every spectrum from elementary, embraces flatpak (and flathub). It's exactly the piece of the puzzle that would have enabled what you suggest: write elementary-flavored apps, sell them everywhere. Given that elementary has already added the Sideload app, I'm not sure if they're as ideological about GTK FOSS purity as it sometimes seems.