[dragonwriter]

> What, however, about people who develop apps for a living on their own or in their own small company, who don’t want to or think they can become Twitter or The New York Times?

If you can't build a web app usable outside of Glass on more conventional devices, find a way of charging for it if you need to make money from the whole operation, and build a free interface to Glass, you aren't going to be building compelling Glass apps anyway, given the rather limited interactivity available via Glass.

> What about people who made their hobby their job? What about your mom-and-pop dev?

They build a web-based application (paid, freemium, or whatever other business model) first, and then, if it warrants, build an auxiliary interface for Glass which has no added charge.

> When I think "great apps" I think primarily of those developers. And they will not be able to survive on Glass.

Glass isn't really (by features, independent of ToS restrictions) a suitable primary app platform. So no developers are going to be able to survive on Glass alone.

[arrrg]

There is no reason for all this unnecessary complication.

[dragonwriter]

> There is no reason for all this unnecessary complication.

The reason is that: 1) Glass is not a platform suitable for complete apps, but for auxiliary interfaces for web-based services, and 2) Google doesn't want to encourage a model of people paying for services and then paying an additional charge for Glass access to the services, at least initially.