The state of paid Sailfish apps, and app Ecosystem.

The figures quoted on that page are miserable, or perhaps I misunderstand what is occurring there.

Quote;

Liberapay was launched 2 years ago and has 2595 users.

€26,388.99 is escrowed within Liberapay.

The last payday was 5 days ago and transferred €783.94 between 585 users.
465 participants gave money.
179 received money.
59 did both.

On average, people who donate give €0.90 each to 2 other users.

€783.94 divided by 585 users = €1.34 each.

well, ijust heard about it as some german (tech) podacsters were talking about it and joined. i guess at least in german this can gain some traction. after all.. just an idea :)

Sure @misc11 - I wasn't criticising you or your findings, far from it; I'm just gobsmacked at the figures they give.

@Edz sure! its just this service is young and kind of unknown in the shadow of patreon. but i think if there was an app and integration in the store, the numbers would sure go up.

i would hope, this isnt just jumping on sth existing - its making sth happen - for all FLOSS devs - not just jolla, so spread the word ;)

@misc11 - based on casual reading of the site, this actually could fit SFOS quite well.

@Edz - I presume that there has been lack of bigger projects using it. Not sure we can bump the user count that much, but maybe money flow could increase?

If you don't see the point, please think a bit about the people who actually write the software which you are installing on your Linux machine. Do you think all of them just write this great quality software in their spare time? Well, some of them do, but especially several critical components (Kernel, Desktop Environments etc.) are maintained by people who are paid by companies to do that full time. These companies are usually no charities and also need money to sustain their business - even Canonical shall be profitable in the long run. This money usually comes from other businesses - as they need a reliable infrastructure and support for their business or because they do advertising and want to know who you are.

Also think a bit further: Why did Jolla change priorities from consumer to governments/large businesses? Because they can't sustain a business from consumers! Many consumers don't see the large and complex effort to implement this software and take it for granted that some nerdy guys spend their whole time on providing nice updates to your favorite applications or simply don't care if their applications spy on them.

So, SFOS Community, you can't have everything: No spy/adware, no paid apps and a plethora of nice, high quality applications for your consumer needs. In its most basic sense, a "Community" was never meant to be "consumption-only" - it has always been a balance of giving and receiving. As mentioned above, if the Community is not willing to pay for good work, that's OK, but then, please don't expect that people develop things for you...

It is exactly why I don't see the point of a paid market: quality software can be either made by large companies supporting free software or by motivated people (for any reason, most popular not being money). As such, I am not convinced that a paid market would be a way to have quality software for sailfish. And when I look at the state of other markets I am even less convinced.

I am grateful to people providing free software for sailfish (even if I have very few needs in terms of so-called "applications"). But support for paid apps is not likely to provide more developpers (at least, good developpers) for Sailfish, at the cost of DRM (probably) and of a giant mess of useless paying apps (certainly). (Obviously, the word "giant" need to be relativised to the size of the sailfish community.)

Well, taking a look at the Apple ecosystem, I would really say that small/medium size companies or freelancers have a solid chance of monetizing good quality software. On Android things look slightly different, I agree - there people want to be spied on - except the few people who use it without Google Services.

So, let's see if there is a (small) market for paid apps on SFOS or not. I'll most certainly try it out (if nothing serious happens...). But just to repeat, for me as developer the decision is clear: If there is not even a small market by mid 2018, I'll jump ship and don't publish apps anymore.

@Ygriega, I fully concur with all the points in your first post.

However the size of the SFOS userbase is so small it does not and will not ever support monetization by paid applications.

@juiceme Never say never... ;) At least we should give it a try. Of course, it won't pay off for the complete effort if you consider all the working hours, but to a certain extent it could be possible. If not, well, that's also a result as I said...

Yes, that's what they also hinted at during the last Community Meeting... I coudn't be less impressed.

For which reason?

ahh, yes, another user here on TJC linked to a video, presented by Marc Dillon for Zipper - "Sell your soul (data) for a couple of euros/dollars/pounds" - I guess some will fall for it. I also need to look into it, but my first impressions are the same as ossi1967's response.

@Spark: Isn't it obvious? The Sailfish ecosystem in itself is tiny. The success of a payment system will depend on the number of users willing to use it, trusting it. Would they implement what's standard everywhere (like credit cards, PayPal, operator billing,...), they'd reach 99.9% of the Sailfish user base. Implementing something else that's totally new, that nobody knows how to handle, that (as far as I get it) willl only be integrated on Sony hardware and not on older devices (Jolla 1, Aqua Fish, tablet,...) as the only option will cover a small amount of the Sailfish user base. Developers will most probably not be too happy.

The way I see it trends always start very small. As a company of Jolla's size (and market share) your only option to succeed on the longer term is to be the first on such a trend and then grow rapidly if you set on the right horse (with the significant risk of failure if you set on the wrong horse). For established standards the market is already settled by Android/iOS/Banks/Credit Cards. To me it looks like a flight forward (in German "Flucht nach vorn").

And as a side effect the Jolla store can use Zipper for payments (not saying that this is the main aim of Zipper).

I agree. The Sailfish OS community is quite much like any other Linux distro community, and I guess many of us prefer FOSS when possible. Going to myself I only buy proprietary software if there is no other option, but on the other hand I gladly donate to FOSS projects, especially if it's easy. Having a store that makes it easy to contribute via for example Bountysource would be perfect!