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Comment on Mac OS X App Store Poses Problems for Open Source Softwareparent

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30% may be a reasonable trade-off. For that 30%, you get:

- Eyeballs! (A potentially huge built-in audience and higher chance of discovery)

- A payment infrastructure that users are already comfortable with

- An update infrastructure

- In-app purchase (I assume?)

- DRM (?) if you care about that sort of thing

All in all, this sounds like a fair trade to me.

My guess is that serious indie devs will target the OSX app store first, and later build in third-party payment + update. Early 2011 will be an interesting time for the Apple MicroISVs.

I agree with your last statement: it'll be adopted more quickly by indie developers. I also agree that the arguments you list could be compelling for many.

The question I have is what will the likes of Adobe do?

I think the Mac App Store will see an avalanche of cheap/free apps, which is probably a good thing, as to do these with your own website and payment gateway infrastructure is probably uneconomic.

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