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An idea for unlike store payments, that would guarantee permanent Jolla income, low friction when deciding whether to pay.

Let the user pay a subscription price (country dependent, something like 5-10 eur a month for EU), have all apps available "for free", distribute payments based on apps popularity (downloads/like a month, or better based on how many times/seconds app is actually used)

Certainly to avoid music industry plague (almost all musicians are poor, good not super popular ones are poor, few are very rich stars) you could distribute payments not in linear dependence, but e.g. as a square root of popularity

Advantages

• Simple, all you can eat
• Helps supporting real useful apps of shy authors who would otherwise give apps out for free
• Image of Jolla as a fair platform where developers get exactly what their apps are worth
• Unlike, might fail as everything risky, but might succeed heavily

Disadvantages

• Developers can't claim themselves that their app is worth a lot. E.g. you cannot sell MegaSoft Office to very few people, but for $100 each copy. Will it be still attractive for developers?
• How fair is "popularity" score and what "fair score" is will always be questionable. If you use real complex office suite once a week should it really earn way less than simple funny cats browser you use three times a day?
• What do you do if users do not want to pay something every month?
  • Shall they see no apps at all? Shall some apps be really free and some - subscription free? Shall apps be able to limit feature set when user isn't subscribed?

What do you think?

P.S.
Inspired by Spotify business model and Free Software Foundation - I've heard about square root idea from Richard Stallmann, he wanted to reward popular musicians, but not that much and support talented not so popular ones

An idea for unlike store payments, that would guarantee permanent Jolla income, low friction when deciding whether to pay.

Let the user pay a subscription price (country dependent, something like 5-10 eur a month for EU), have all apps available "for free", distribute payments based on apps popularity (downloads/like a month, or better based on how many times/seconds app is actually used)

Certainly to avoid music industry plague (almost all musicians are poor, good not super popular ones are poor, few are very rich stars) you could distribute payments not in linear dependence, but e.g. as a square root of popularity

Advantages

• Simple, all you can eat
• Helps supporting real useful apps of shy authors who would otherwise give apps out for free
• Image of Jolla as a fair platform where developers get exactly what their apps are worth
• Unlike, might fail as everything risky, but might succeed heavily

Disadvantages

• Developers can't claim themselves that their app is worth a lot. E.g. you cannot sell MegaSoft Office to very few people, but for $100 each copy. Will it be still attractive for developers?
• How fair is "popularity" score and what "fair score" is will always be questionable. If you use real complex office suite once a week should it really earn way less than simple funny cats browser you use three times a day?
• What do you do if users do not want to pay something every month?
  • Shall they see no apps at all? Shall some apps be really free and some - subscription free? Shall apps be able to limit feature set when user isn't subscribed?

What do you think?

P.S.
Inspired by Spotify business model and Free Software Foundation - I've heard about square root idea from Richard Stallmann, he wanted to reward popular musicians, but not that much and support talented not so popular ones