The current model is rather indirect. The author spends x amount of time developing the app and then they release it. Not until he has y downloads will he have

The current model is rather indirect. The author spends x amount of time developing the app and then they release it. Not until he has y downloads will he have recouped his initial development costs and he will continue to earn money well past the mark of y downloads. I think selling upgrades to apps would partially help, as it would encourage updates due to the possibility of recouping the costs from an existing customer base as well as allow the app to meet multiple points along a price/functionality curve. They could release source code and sell it anyways. The problem there is that someone else could compile it and sell it on the app store to undercut him. I'm not sure what kind of recourse (if any) the developer would have in such a situation, thus I doubt releasing source is viable. The rich benefactor idea is clearly in jest, since such arrangements are rare. Yet, corporations pay people to work on open source code. As long as the business can get their value out of a piece of software and it isn't core to their business model, there is very little reason why the code shouldn't be able to be open. Regardless, I don't think the indie developer cares about software freedom, they just don't want to be pestered by free software advocates. They don't see anything wrong with their business model so even if there was an alternative (and there is very little in the way of alternatives except to look for customers to pay and then develop the app instead of the other way around), I doubt this indie developer would care.