The state of paid Sailfish apps, and app Ecosystem.

I totally agree with you that Jolla Harbour (Store) is too restrictive. Especially if you need to use some low-level code/libraries/API you are out of luck to get the app published on Jolla Harbour.

Addtionally Jolla also does not release all the APIs of all the implemented features and claim that they are unstable for years.

In my opinion the missing APIs and the restrictive Harbour store rules are the main reason of missing high-quality apps. And the missing paid app/ monetization (without ads) option is the second reason.

There's ways around the trusted build infrastructure limitations; it only partly addresses the origin issues (take for example a simple wrapper which unpacks a gzipped blob, for instance). The wrapper will be signed, but the content will still remain unsure. Or other packages which subsequently download on the fly (from whatever service out there).

thanks @MartinK and @Alex for speaking up. A dev who's site I go to regularly lists the two things Alex listed...missing APIs along with incomplete documentation and no option or even discusstion to monetize apps as the reason he and others have abandoned SF.

@tortoisedoc The idea is that the source code would be open & available for users/community to inspect. So anyone willing to look would be able to spot stuff like this and act accordingly (eq. not install the app due to possible security implications).

@Ygriega thank you very much for your comments. Your opinion carries more weight than anything I could say as YOU ARE part of that group that keeps this ecosystem alive. It is up to us and us alone to expand what we have. Whatever help you need feel free to reach out. While I'm not a coder I know my way around linux. The company I work for is a manufacturer and all of our products run on top of SLES11. We also have an external coding house at our disposal and many of them write apps on the side. If you get a positive reception from your users then we should talk to share some ideas about what we have found out in our respective research.

Thanks for your reply and your offer. For now I don't need any external resources, just some time over the next days (and probably weeks) to implement the design in a very first version and ship the next version of Piepmatz with the aforementioned survey. Also the steps afterwards (if the survey results are promising) aren't really a problem from the implementation perspective - that would be pretty straight forward. It's rather the necessary housekeeping what needs some clarification - registering a business in Germany, notifying my employer that I have a part-time business on my own (anti-competition rules), tax registration to be able to sell software across the EU etc...

I use your app and will pay for it, I like it!

I have multiple huge problems with the paywall you implemented: the payment is neither managed by you, jolla or the sailfish community. By being managed by "DigiStore24" I don't know where my money goes I don't know where my ethics goes and I don't know how much do you get. It also create inconsistency with the rest of apps that are free to use. I'd rather give you 100 euros directly to you through paypal than using this "DigiStore24". Additionally this add UX problems because I have to manage with a store that isn't even an app on my phone and disconnected from the rest of the ecosystem. Even worse: it seems to be just a random "licence key" string like when I was a kid buying games and trying to keep the key like gold to be sure to be able to still install my games (and at the end I just install crack because it's simpler than managing those keys...)

That's why I just downgraded piepmatz 0.5...

@NeWin Thanks for your comment. Jolla made it pretty clear that they currently have other priorities than establishing an own paid app option in their store. So that isn't an option. Then the Sailfish Community. You need a company with a lot of expertise and experience to handle such complex things as payments in multiple markets properly from a legal and organizational perspective. As far as I know there is not even a single Community company out there, let aside one with the required know-how. So, this is also not an option. So what about me and my company WerkWolf? Theoretically, this would be possible, but that would require a lot of time and/or money upfront. However, I wanted to concentrate on the things which count: My apps and a framework which enables payments for Sailfish OS. So I decided to outsource the payments, billing, tax handling, sales automation etc. to an external company. Digistore24 was the best fit (of course with some compromises) - especially with respect to data privacy as they operate under German laws and I has been using their services as customer several times as well. If you want to know how much I get, check out https://docs.digistore24.com/knowledge-base/digistore24-calculator/?lang=en

Concerning the "inconsistency": Well, somebody needed to start with paid apps. That's what this thread is all about. If everything works out fine, there will be much more paid apps in the future...

If you want to pay me directly 100 Euros, feel free to do so. Please send me an e-mail and I'll send you a proper invoice even without the need of PayPal (they actually want a lot of commission) - just using a SEPA transfer.

Concerning the key: You don't need to enter the key again on the same device as it's automatically registered . And if you get other devices, you can use the same key for 3 other ones. It's not hard to keep an e-mail or ask me to send it again. There is no need to think it's easier to crack it...

Anyway, have fun with version 0.5!

make-money-fast scammers come with paid apps; by itself, free software is quite a weak defence in that sense (free software can be paid for, believe it or not).

I'm not looking for games I only used it as example of what we had with the N9. Why is everyone talking about what goes on with the big stores when we are nothing like the big stores and never will be? Just like with linux in general when you're not even 2% of world users you're not going to be targeted en masse. Yes, there are those who will but they are easy to weed out and blackball.

@Desmo I am not against commercial solutions per se, just bad experience with the big ones. And I doubt a small store (Jolla?) for Sailfish OS alone would be commercially feasible. But I like your idea of joining an existing store (Opera?) - It might be worth for them to add the Sailfish platform if it generates good will and maybe boosts their Android sells in the process. More choice is good... as long as we can avoid mandatory Adware.

@Kao I got a response from Opera but it was from a customer support rep and she had no idea what I was talking about. She asked me to please clarify further....I don't know how to clarify the question "would you be willing to host apps for Jolla's Sailfish OS?"

I need to figure out how to get to someone higher than basic customer support. Someone who can give their blessing and then speak with senior community members about going forward. The trick is finding who that person is.

Well, you could explain that Sailfish OS is a successor to Symbian OS (close enough). And stress the point that it is a commercial product focused on BRICS but with international distribution. Which I gather is Opera Stores target audience as well. (Now I wonder if Jolla would actually be OK with a third party store hosting software for their platform, and profiting from it.) Anyways, good luck in your effort!

I think, you would have the opportunity to earn more money with paid app support in Jolla store. The user base is much smaller, but your apps have less competitors on SFOS and the audience is different. Where on android maybe only 0.01% see your app and only a few are willing to pay due to free or adware alternatives, on SFOS probably 90% of some 20.000 Users see your app and if it is worth it, maybe 1-10% are willing to pay which would give you the theoratical revenue of up to 1800 EUR if you offer it for 1 EUR. Not much, but maybe better then on android.

@dysko, thanks for your contributions!

Your story is a prime example of the way paid stores work, it just is not worthwhile to do.

If I needed your applications I'd do as I normally do, donate about 5eur...10eur to you. If I really use the application a lot, I do it yearly. But I do that only for applications that are open source. (and it might be that I could try Mastodon, except that up to now I never had used any messaging protocols and probably never will...)

@ juiceme while you conveniently don't mention that his last problem point was not having the ability or CHOICE to monetize his creations on Jolla's or another SF store.

@Desmo as I see it @dysko just proved how difficult it is to monetize applications even on the stores which are all but geared towards that goal... How do you think it would go on Jolla store where there are just a few thousand potential eyeballs??

As I see it the only way to do it is the first way he describes, to have the "buy me a coffee" option.

The problem with paid option is that there will just be handful of people who will buy the application.

come on @juiceme...you seriously believe that we will have the same problems as the Android app store? Competition is completely saturated over there...it's near impossible to get any app notices on that store. SF on the other hand has zero...no competition and we only have a few hundered apps.

We are STARVING for apps...every SF user would notice a new app immediately as the buzz on this forum would take off for a good quality app...even if it was a paid app that but did a particular job.

I don't know why you're against this...I have no desire to see Jolla's store get paid apps. That ship has sailed. I want to do my own thing or have Opera accept apps with their current infrastructure. You can stay on the Jolla store and you will NEVER see or have to use a paid app.

So why are you against us doing our own thing?

No one seriously uses cryptocurrencies. They're stupidly difficult in use, and don't actually solve any problems.

That's why there'd be need to productize it properly to make it as close as possible to flattr (in terms of experience), if not better (flattr is not simple either if you ask me). The main issue that remains, IMO, is the taxation. And jolla's part in this (ie. which piece of the stake they would like)

Forget about discussing this with Jolla. We've been waiting for how long now? You want to keep on waiting for another couple of years? I don't. There are doers in this world and there are those who sit on the sideline waiting for others to do something. If we wait any longer we're simply going to lose more devs.

@nthn they are still rather difficult for the masses to get into, however lots of startups are getting into them, which will make that a thing of the past (like whenhub for example, a startup scott adams got into will make use of ethereum and will be just an app for people to download/install)

@nthn@szopin exactly, the productization is finally taking off. The key point would be which chain to use (existing? new one? If so, how? ICO's?); after that, making sure the price points of applications remain constant is most likely the biggest challenge. Perhaps an origin-validation key could be taken directly from the blockchain. This would then potentially free Jolla from licensing enforcing burden (for apps which so require). Here's an example of such a startup : http://license.rocks/

As already mentioned on Twitter: I appreciate your approach. It utilizes the well established distribution channels and only requires to buy a license from an external shop. Ideally you would integrate this purchase process into the app. However for me switching over to that website wasn't an issue for me. I hope this will get adopted by other developers and accepted bu the users

I must say I haven't tested it since I am somewhat away from twitter. However, I would like to congratulate you for developing this platform! Its great that you keep twitter client open source and can plugin such module to push users to pay for your work. Good luck!

I'm not a heavy user of twitter, either but paid for Piepmatz anyway because I want to encourage this new method of appreciating a developer's work.

@yurumi thanks for the feedback. Without you devs still coding for us it would be a desert.

Are you going to stay with SF or will you be moving on in the future?

I'm going to stay with SF as it is inspiring and leaves much space for creativity (i.e. shortcomings you have to cope with as SF user ;-). Besides I really like Qt/QML I don't feel the urge to develop something for android leave alone iOS. Still it is frustrating how Jolla is ignoring the paid app topic...

@yurumi good to hear...another soldier still in the ranks :)

I consider the issue with payed apps similarly to you (tax / too busy real job / ...) and was mainly a user of open-source software. When I decided to move to SFOS, it became rather quickly clear that unless you do anything yourself, not much will change. And starting to write open source software was a way to pay back the use of the software by others. Now, closer to the questions:

• Learning: For me, the hardest part was learning QML. If you have worked with it, you are in the clear. Otherwise, just invest time into learning QML syntax (its really weird to declare variable id within structure) and QML interaction with C++.

• Value: it will be valued if the product is good :). In general, community is small and users tend to know who developed what, I guess.

• Greater good/most wanted: The following worked for me: Find what's missing for YOU in SFOS application landscape. Find the app that's closest to what you want and contact the developer(s) and suggest your help. If there is no such app, maybe there is something similar in Linux and its possible to bring it over to SFOS by splitting backend and frontend.

• Best practices: depends on the project. Larger projects (if you port something and adjust for SFOS) have good review system, some have guidelines. Many original apps in SFOS are single-programmer job and then it would depend on that developer. For Mer backend - there is a separate issue tracker, but I don't know about entry points.

@rinigus: Thanks for your elaborated input! I will see what kind of empty space I can find for my efforts.

@juiceme I agree and disagree with you. Donations are half a dozen, and all very minimal (for my apps I can count them on 30 fingers)

On top of that; I believe the right to choose if the app should be free or paid belongs to the developer, and only to him / her.

I agree with you 100% on the above point, the right to choose whether the application is paid/gratis, open/closed, that all is the right of the developer.

OTOH, It is also the right of the user to choose to not install paid or closed applications if it suits her :)

I just point out my own opinion that having pay-for-download application option available would not increase the number of applications in the store.... quite possibly it would lead to a flood of not-good-for-anything junk just like in major allication stores!

@juiceme thats possible! But ofc there's always QA

@juiceme Sorry, I have to disagree. I keep on going back to the N9 store but there was very few junk apps littered all over that store. Our community is too small for that to happen en masse like in the big stores. We don't even register on the radar of about 95% of users or devs. Whether you decide to install is up to you and that's fine...but the option should be available for our devs. Some devs who made good apps for the N9 have moved on due to this very issue.

@Desmo so what do you propose?

Agree 100%! It should be one tap / donation.