Paid apps

[damianatorrpm]

Does Flathub support commercial apps? Where do these go?

[TingPing]

So far it isn't something that has been handled. It has been vaguely discussed that it would be good to support eventually. CC @alexlarsson

[damianatorrpm]

Well honestly now is the time if you want to win against snap...
They are offering that and snap won't go away like mir when there is no alternative.

[Erick555]

I don't think that flatpak purpose is to "make snap go away".

[x80486]

I think the point here is to let Flatpak to compete on the same grounds than Snap. Right now they have different application portfolios, and being Flathub the most popular, defacto store for (most of the) Flatpaks out there, it would be nice to accept and host also paid applications.

[Erick555]

That's true and "make snap go away" isn't part of that.

[DoctorJohn]

Are we talking about a "pay what you want" option like the one in the elementaryos appcenter?

[TingPing]

The question as I understand it is that Flathub is community funded and ran on donated hardware and services. So we want to know before we go down the commercial route that this won't cause issues with them pulling their support.

[amtlib-dot-dll]

One more thing, most commonly-used payment methods are proprietary themselves (at least proprietary JavaScript code for OAuth 2). Software developers seldom sell applications in BTC. (Donation is not payment)

[mwleeds]

Experimental support for paid apps was just merged into Flatpak: flatpak/flatpak#3167

[albfan]

I have an interesting case with: #2043. If maintainer @vedderb agrees to release the tool under flatpak, they have payment releases to tip maintainers and sustain the project (all versions has same exact features): Platinum, Gold, Silver, Bronze

[albfan]

Probably gazillions of things left to make this a possibility but just if that happens, can anyone describe how paid apps would work on flathub?

My idea:

• Apps provided by flathub with a link that needs authentication

• Sites selling those apps provide you a token to download the flatpakref (or install from flatpak) Something like a public/private key that is invalidated after successful download

• I go to a website or app store, buy the app and get the token

• use the token to install app from flathub

    flatpak install --token 5ec235ad252f25a25d435ad https://dl.flathub.org/build-repo/35368/com.github.VescTool.flatpakref
  

apps get the power of flathub CI and bandwidth for distribution but allowing to make some profit for maintain or living

[mwleeds]

Flatpak has actually had support for paid apps for a while now: https://github.com/flatpak/flatpak/blob/b8d8e5bf043476364f496170b46695a7a42c7e57/common/flatpak-transaction.h#L135

[albfan]

@mwleeds then flatpak is ready? I guess flathub is not (probably not a goal for flathub?)

How does this FlatpakTransaction https://docs.flatpak.org/en/latest/libflatpak-api-reference.html#FlatpakTransaction is supposed to work?

[alex-tee]

related: I offer trial and full (paid) binary versions for my app (using a compile-time flag). I think it would be nice if flathub supported 2 options for "try" and "buy/install" if apps want to do that

[12people]

I would love to have a pay-what-you-want model like on elementaryOS's AppCenter. It's a model that makes sense for free and open-source apps, since those can easily be recompiled and republished as free of cost. It allows FOSS devs to set a preferred price for their app and make money, while also allowing people who can't afford the preferred price a way to set a lower or a free price. That way, free forks of FOSS apps aren't being unnecessarily created and FOSS devs can make money off their apps.

Based on the discussions here, I'm concerned that the supported model would be just a standard single-price model, which works well for proprietary apps but not for FOSS apps.

[mwleeds]

The latest updates on this feature are here: https://discourse.flathub.org/t/seeking-contractors-for-work-on-flathub-project/1889