"The point is we still don’t have a robust way for developers to monetise their application development work" You can monetise your work the old-fashioned way.

"The point is we still don’t have a robust way for developers to monetise their application development work" You can monetise your work the old-fashioned way. Open a website and advertise your wares for sale. The fact is that Linux does have some 'app stores'. They're called 'package managers', programs like 'apt', 'yum', 'rpm', etc.