Johnel,
I think people meant that administration, server expenses and upkeep/fixing/coding of store is handled by donations and advertisements. Apps have their own payment.

I really like the idea and would be willing to support it in any way I could, including making a moderate financial donation.

I would like most apps to be free and open source, but appreciate that some may attract a fee.

You've srarted the ball rolling, so let's keep it moving!

My toughts where towards Maemo, and the natural followup on Meego.
Look at Android Market, Apple Appstore - They've been a great part of the success those platforms have had in the last years.

Yep - I think this is a good idea - Separated payments directly to the developer - Much less upkeep to have such a system. Paypal or something like that would be ideal, I think.

Another small note:
I know alot of you guys are against taking money for your code, but to be honest - Most of you wouldn't mind a few bucks as a gratitude for your effort (atleast I believe so).
And to be honest - OVIstore really sucks balls.

Can the appstore be sustained by donations and advertising alone?

Would we need corporate sponsors as well as advertising?

Do we want to attract commercial developers too (e.g. computer game companies)?

Apple have used cash generated by advertising to support cheaper pricing of apps and I think this is a good idea, it would be nice to see free apps and these to be payed through advertising but perhaps a middle ground could be reached where developer competitions are held with cash rpizes or the like?

The '12 million' number regrettably is bogus.

11.88 million of that is new versions of fmms.



To paste something I wrote elsewhere.

While interesting, this is highly misleading.
Take - for example - fmms, though this applies for all applications, it was one I happened to have bookmarked.

http://maemo.org/download-stats/index.php?unixn...
This graph shows downloads of fmms over time.
It adds up to well over 100K downloads.

But.

fmms is a great app.
So great I've downloaded it well over a dozen times!
http://maemo.org/packages/view/fmms/ - shows several updates. Look for the 'package promoted lines' - specifically that a new version was released on the 8th, and 18th of this month.

Zoom in on the graph above on may 9th, and you see that about 2000 upgraded on the 8th, 6000 on the 9th, 3000 on the tenth, with a tail of maybe 2000 over the succeeding few days.
This is around 15000 users who upgraded when 1.03 appeared in extras-testing.

Look along to may 18th, when it was promoted to extras - and the number is perhaps 10000 'normal' users.

Then the launch of PR1.2 caused a lot of people who don't normally update to update.
The size of this spike would probably be close to the 'real' number of users of fmms.

I'd be willing to support this idea. After my positive experience with frals from fMMS helping me work my problem out, I'd be more than happy to donate.

That's quite a good idea. Hosting sponsor is probably one of the first things we should be doing. Payment-solution is another thing which should be possible to get a sponsor for. Software/Design to run this Store - Well there should be enough smart and dedicated people in here to get it up and running.

"Put your app here, and have the chance of winning $$$" - Not sure if the "chance"-part is attractive for developers.

Another thing could be - "Hire a developer"-thing, which you could present a problem, and someone with the knownledge could develop it for you, for a small fee/donation.

How about microdonations with, for example, Flattr (http://flattr.com)
A flattr button system would be a pretty cool feature for foss developers IMO.