Software was not meant to be someone's 'property' that can be bought or sold. Everyone has a right to free download, modify and share, that's the point of GNU and Linux.
Bill Gates would like to know your location
Bill gates would like to know everyones location
That’s what the whole windows telemetry enshitification nonsense is about
If you want Windows, you know where to find it.
Ubuntu Snap comes close to what OP described, and so do npm, apt etc. They need to realize that the terminal is not an enemy. Text output makes it easier to resolve issues than "install failed" you get in many commercial app stores.
Did you read the article? It's about being able to buy and sell apps, not just about installing them.
Most are FOSS so that's not required. Man pages and readmes usually specify the project website where a “Donate” link is.
Are you just deliberately ignoring the article?
This man is in desperate need of both tar and feathers
You mean tar and gzip?
Flatpak started working on payments earlier this year, so that is happening. But have we forgotten about Steam? It's mainly used for games yes, but your can sell software on it too. I've even bought some software on it.
People were developing proprietary paywalled software for Windows for years before Windows Store, or whatever it is called, was introduced.
It's called "The package manager". :^)
I would say that's more of a feature than a bug.
I think I would have more of a problem with the centralisation implied by this proposal than I would with paying for apps; a centralised "store" gives too much power to one organisation - but if you could choose to download one I don't think that's too much of a problem. But then we already have Steam for that.
I think I would like to see Amazon, Google, Netflix etc to pay for the free and open source projects they use to make money and sell in their AWS and database offerings.
I -personally- don't miss a store for end users. Marketshare for Linux on the destop is slim anyways. That's not where you earn a considerable amount of your money.
And i like things like the value-for-value model. So maybe instead include donation links in the package managers and into the databases of the gnome-software etc. (I think it's called packagekit.)
"store" - n. - a quantity or supply of something kept for use as needed
A store doesn't have to mean that something must be for sale. There are numerous Linux app stores that all function exactly as they are designed.
The term "store" grates on me a bit, until recently we just called them repositories/repos, I think that's a better name.
It’s really just semantics. And the article just seems like a nonsensical argument, to me.
You can build in subscriptions or support licenses to your open source apps. Look at cryptomator and bitwarden for example. I know others do it. (And the free version is about as good as paid. But you can pay for a few near features and to support the devs)
And the beauty is that the package management takes no cut and puts no rules on payment methods.
This is the right answer.
Well there were/are attempts to make flatpak with flathub an universal app store on linux. If I remember correctly, there were some ideas mooted on adding paid apps in to flathub.
Steam.
You know, that probably is the closest thing Linux has. The only thing is it's not preinstalled and I wonder how many of the actual programs are Linux compatible.
But otherwise, yeah it's more an app store than the package manaer
Well, elementary OS had that implemented, and Flathub was trying to make that a thing, but I'm not sure what happened there
The solution is not centralization, the solution is a protocol. The team at Flattr tried to do something that worked for content, but it was centralized. The team at Ganxy tried to expand the definition of monetize, but it was centralized. If we had a protocol where teams could publish metadata that enabled users to use any data-driven app to generate some form of compensation for the contributors, then we could build all sorts of workflows into package managers that made it easier.
ITT a lot of people who don't read anything but the title
The AUR does exactly this, nothing else needed.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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