| For the record I'd love this too, I just don't see it happening anytime soon. I've been thinking about this recently I'm not not sure the (vocal) Linux community would accept what it might take. * Developers want to work on projects that interest them and provide a benefit to others. * However, developers also want to make a good living so they need an audience willing to pay money and make it worth the time it takes to polish something to a decent finish. * Some developers would prefer to keep their code closed-source. (Again the vocal) Linux community all to often comes across as everything should be not only be free open-source also free to buy - it's almost a dirty word if you charge for software. Additionally on the Apple-side of things: * There's a culture of what constitutes a good app, it drives a certain perfectionism to the final polish that you rarely see in linux desktop apps. Personally I've not seen a huge amount of apps on linux that cater for different user audiences. As technical aware users we vastly over-estimate the amount of technical knowledge and patience an average user has to figure something out. * Apple is now offering an audience from a multitude of devices. You can build your app for a watch, phone, tablet or desktop. e.g. if someone buys your app on the iPhone they are more likely to be interested in your apps for other devices so there's more opportunity to cross-sell. Ubuntu is probably the closest I see to being able to set some proper direction here. But I've yet to see them double-down and really set their mind to it, they seem to set a direction hold for while then back-down and go another direction. From the outside, it seems like anytime they've really tried to do something different or _the horror_ make some money it seems to just rile up the vocal linux community. |