[coffeeaddict1]

And yet none of those "outsiders" have figured out a way to economically renumerate developers for their work. Flathub had a initiative a few years ago to add payments to help developers fund their projects, but I haven't seen anything come out of it.

[aragilar]

Most linux distros require that software they distribute is open source, and link to the home pages of applications, so effectively donations are the only way to pay for those. There are paid distros (which are almost always about support, there was a paid GNUStep distro though many years ago).

On the other hand, Steam et al are app stores where developers can get paid.

[coffeeaddict1]

Open source doesn't mean free.

> On the other hand, Steam et al are app stores where developers can get paid.

Yes, this is exactly my point. App stores have a reason to exist. They provide discoverability and a streamlined way to monetise your app, something that is sorely lacking in open source projects. A case in point for example is Krita, which is published as a paid app on the Microsoft Store. The revenue generated by the sales goes to fund the development of the project. Linux needs an equivalent.

[lionkor]

I'm not sure what you're talking about. I can download Blender from almost any package manager, and the devs of Blender are paid.

[coffeeaddict1]

This works for Blender because they're a big fish and receive money from big corporations. The vast majority of good open source projects are underfunded or unpaid. Linux distros need a way to streamline payments to open source apps. As I mentioned above, Flathub [0] had an initiative in this direction, but not sure what happened to that.

[0] https://itsfoss.com/news/flathub-paid-apps