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Comment by jordigh | Hacker News Reader

I'm really happy to see that this is an example of really selling free software: no non-free software in sight. I'm so used to the usual response to "how do I sell free software?" to be "write some non-free software and sell that instead", that I was surprised and pleased to see that Guacamole really is selling 100% free software. All they had to do was attach a price tag, not change the license.

Another counterexample to the proposition that you have to make your users give up their freedom in order to coax them to pay you.

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Indeed. I hoped that Ubuntu, Debian and the other understood that the APT repository is nothing but an App Store. Ubuntu was in great position to start asking for money to divert to projects. Who wouldn't pay $10 for the convenience to install Gimp or libreoffice with one command?

>>> Who wouldn't pay $10 for the convenience to install Gimp or libreoffice with one command?

I hope this is an ironic comment? If Ubuntu asks for money, it will be uninstalled the next day. Debian and CentOS do just as well without the shenanigans.

elementary OS has something similar to what you're proposing.

All the apps created specifically for elementary OS[0] are available on GitHub, authors set their preferred price in the app store. As a user you can pay-what-you-want for the app (including $0, which allows you to download an app without paying for it).

They're working on an online account feature for the next release so that they can remember your credit card to make the process more streamlined, persist between installs and similar. At the moment, it's more convenient to specify $0 than it is to enter your card over and over again.

You can also skip the AppCenter all together by specifying the package name (example: "apt install com.github.alaim23.planner").

[0] 162 at the moment: https://appcenter.elementary.io/

Similar with Cyberduck. $24 on the Mac App Store to get one-click install, but you can go to their website and download it manually for free.

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