On May 21, 2012, at 7:35 AM, Benjamin Smedberg wrote: >> Does each store need to have a relationship with the author of the apps >> it lists? I was under the impression this wasn't going to be necessary. > > I believe that the intent of this restriction is entirely related to > receipts. Assuming that an app requires purchase, the app will only have a > relationship with certain stores which can sell the app (and from which it > accepts receipts). So this is basically a declarative way of saying that if > you got the app from some other store, you shouldn't expect it to work.
I know the discussion has steered away from paid apps but I wanted to touch on that for a minute. Brokering an exhange of money between app developer and app consumer currently requires trust, integrity, and legally binding contracts. Mozilla Marketplace is playing the role of a central authority here but the benefit is that developers can more easily sell apps and do commerce online. This is a path to more openness. However, it's still closed because it locks out anyone who cannot use PayPal or Telefonica carrier billing, etc (because they live in Russia or whatever). Breaking away from one central payment authority is very hard. Mozilla might someday solve this problem! There are experiments under way within the Identity group to see how we could create a decentralized, chain-of-trust payment arrangement where Mozilla Marketplace is *not* necessarily the central payment authority. This would move us closer to a truly open marketplace where developers could sell apps *directly* to consumers without anyone in the middle. In actuality there would be some service in the middle but that service would be discoverable rather than set in stone by the app developer. Again, it's a hard problem but I wanted to point out that we may one day solve it. The work that's already been done on Persona ID has proven some of the key concepts in building such a decentralized system. I consider our current payment offering as a first iteration with the simple goal of making online commerce easier for app developers than it is today. -Kumar _______________________________________________ dev-webapps mailing list dev-webapps@lists.mozilla.org https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-webapps
