
Krita in the Windows Store: an update - iamcreasy
https://krita.org/en/item/krita-in-the-windows-store-an-update/
======
iamcreasy
> Now Microsoft was certainly aware that Krita is open source software
> published in the GNU Public License, and Krita would be distributed outside
> the Windows Store. They actually helped us get Krita in the Windows Store to
> begin with...

> In any case, since we’re absolutely powerless, we’ve had to change the Store
> listing…

This is outrageous! MS reached out[1] to Krita team to get the app on their
store, and now forcing the devs to delete link to the Krita website!

[1] [https://krita.org/en/item/krita-available-from-the-
windows-s...](https://krita.org/en/item/krita-available-from-the-windows-
store/)

~~~
executesorder66
I'm loving the "new" microsoft.

~~~
m_fayer
There are two new Microsofts, both trying to make great big piles of money.

One is the tech infrastructure provider. They're keeping the corporate
customers but now also going after consumer-facing tech and startups. To do
the latter, they've finally had to shed their dogma and go where the devs are.
OSS, platform-agnostic, this is the MS of .NET Core, VSCode, and family.
There's good people working here, and they'll make Azure make heaps of money.

The other Microsoft does "platforms". They've had a lock on corporate for a
long time, though no one enjoyed it. Now they want to expand their brand and
their lock-in into the personal lives of upper-class knowledge workers,
challenging Apple by being the "serious" to Apple's luxury-hipster
positioning, and challenging Google by being coherent and playing a long game.

The first Microsoft knows that the second is no place for their audience, so
they're in a hurry to separate themselves and their wares from the platform-
provider. It's not just .NET Core and VSCode, there's a ton of smaller
projects all moving in the same direction. Sql Operations Studio, Sql Server
for Linux, Blazor, x-plat Azure tooling, x-plat Powershell, opensourcing
MSBuild, it's comprehensive.

I wish they'd just split and become two separate companies.

~~~
styfle
Microsoft Windows vs Microsoft everything else?

------
titanix2
> In any case, since we’re absolutely powerless, we’ve had to change the Store
> listing…

No, you could also pull your software out of the store. The numbers show it
doesn’t really matter and Microsoft need more apps than you need their store.
Beggars can't be choosers.

~~~
jjcm
"Store downloads are only about 125 a week"

If that's the case, then with the 15% MS cut they're pulling in ~$4500 from
the MS store per month - far more than their donations.

~~~
zaarn
That probably counts the same account installing on multiple devices or
reinstalling it. So in reality probably bit less.

------
jarfil
IIRC your "app" is not just the executable, but everything related to your
application in the store. That includes all assets, metadata, listings, etc.
Also the "transactions" includes selling the app in the store, so unless you
make it available free of charge, you can't promote alternate download sites
for the same content you're selling in the store.

You can however link to the "app's website", and if you just happen to have a
download link there, for a version somewhat different from the one in the
store... they might have a much harder time finding something wrong with that.

------
AdmiralAsshat
It's a pity that as soon as an app tries to monetize (even optionally), it's
suddenly at the mercy of the megacorps. Now you need a storefront, a payment
processor, a refund infrastructure, etc. Better to just let the tech giants
who already have the infrastructure handle the billing, in exchange for taking
a monumental cut of your revenue and imposing binding, arbitrary rules at a
moment's notice.

This incident would be a poster child for the widespread need for something
like the AppCenter being developed by the ElementaryOS team, where the apps
can have a "suggested" price tag but be free to download:

[https://medium.com/elementaryos/appcenter-the-future-of-
the-...](https://medium.com/elementaryos/appcenter-the-future-of-the-
universe-1d34f04d1c85)

Regrettably it's Linux only at the moment. It would be interesting to see what
kind of landscape of FOSS apps we might get if it got ported to Windows.

~~~
ttoinou

      it's suddenly at the mercy of the megacorps

You don't need Windows Store to sell Windows software

    
    
      Now you need a storefront

That's how you make people come to your product in an easy way

    
    
      a payment processor

How are you supposed to do otherwise if you want to exchange units of bank
accounts ?

    
    
      a refund infrastructure

Yeah some people want their money back sometimes, this is not donations

------
classics2
Dumb employee running amok here, but who cares he probably shows up on time
for his shift.

Reminds me of people being banned for life from PayPal because their product
names contained the word “emulator”, or for signing up before they were 18..
20 years ago.

~~~
iamcreasy
I sincerely hope that's the case.

------
wernsey
This is outrageous. I also read those rules as 10.8.5 would only apply if you
have in-app purchases and so on.

I agree with other posters that it is probably a low level employee that made
a poor judgement call, but what always irks me about cases like this is that
appealing the decision can feel like such a futile fight.

------
seren
Interesting dilemna for FOSS : you can use a store to generate some revenue,
but you have to comply with byzantine store owner regulations.

~~~
zanny
Any store worth caring about is already too big for your one program to
influence its success. That's the only reason a Foss advocate would want to
avoid such platforms in the first place.

The potential visibility and revenue from using these corporate mouthpieces is
probably always worth it so long as you can assure you won't become dependent
on them.

------
w1nt3rmu4e
And Apple is no better in this regard. Both companies obviously _want_ to
prevent sales outside of their walled gardens -- soft deprecating independent
software with warnings and 'on by default' blocks.

Of course they do, why not take 30% of everyone's work and keep control?

Maybe I misread Krita's situation but I'm not sure why they don't just pull
out of the store and sell independently. Plenty of payment processors would be
happy to take them on.

Pricing is always difficult, but for a product that well known there's almost
certainly a tiered system they could set up that generates enough income to
keep the lights on (or better).

~~~
iamcreasy
Several misconceptions.

> And Apple is no better in this regard.

Microsoft approached[1] them to get Krita(and also Inkscape) on the store.
Microsoft knew the who and what these software stand for. Comparing it with
Apple just doesn't make sense.

> Maybe I misread Krita's situation but I'm not sure why they don't just pull
> out of the store and sell independently. Plenty of payment processors would
> be happy to take them on....Pricing is always difficult, but for a product
> that well known there's almost certainly a tiered system they could set up
> that generates enough income to keep the lights on (or better).

It's a FOSS product. On the blog, the devs said that Krita is on the MS store
because it brings in extra revenue which helps them to continue working on it
full-time. They already have payment system setup on their website to take
donations. But at its core Krita will always be a FOSS.

[1] [https://krita.org/en/item/krita-available-from-the-
windows-s...](https://krita.org/en/item/krita-available-from-the-windows-
store/)

------
skocznymroczny
Does anyone even use the Windows Store on their desktops? I've never installed
a single application from there. I like my next-next-next-next wizards.

~~~
BuckRogers
I go to it first, for the auto updates without additional software. It also
updates apps seamlessly, unless you check the logs you won't even know it
happened. I use it for Spotify, Netflix and a few other things. It needs
improvement but I like it.

~~~
crankylinuxuser
The only time I use Windows is on our AWS instance. On there, we run WSUS and
do automatic updates to a subset, and upon good update, approve the rest of
the machines.

I'd never trust MS's own idea for "updates".

------
corysama
Unpopular opinion: Everyone is talking about abusive corporations, but it’s
clear to me this rule exists to prevent abusive customers. Without it the
store would be full of listings to the effect of

“See how awesome my app is! But, don’t be stupid enough to buy it _here_! Go
to my website and use coupon code ‘LOLTHXMS’ to get it there for 5% off!”

effectively turning the store into a cost-free advertising platform. You might
think Krita is special and deserves an exception. But, you know what happens
when you make a very visible exception to one free customer among ten thousand
free customers...

~~~
EamonnMR
Using the rules of your app store to drive other distribution methods out
still seems abusive.

~~~
amf12
No, the terms do not say that you can't sell or provide your app for free
anywhere else. They say that you can't link to other distribution methods on
the Microsoft app listing page. It would be similar to compare it to a product
being sold on Amazon that says go to our website and get it for 10% discount.
I'm sure Amazon won't allow that.

------
kup0
To me the policy is worded so that clearly 10.8.5 should not apply in this
situation. The fact that they can just choose to apply policy that is opposite
their published policy is ridiculous.

------
nihil75
I see more and more mentions of abusive behaviour by corporations. Google
blocking AdWords / Compute accounts, Facebook rejecting ads, and now this. It
seems innovators must navigate around automated systems and/or non-technical
employees whenever their product is slightly outside the norm - Usually
unsuccessfully.

So what's the alternative to entrusting our fates to faceless corps?
Distributed apps perhaps?

~~~
oblio
Normally? Web apps.

But people are missing the forest for the trees: yes, the tech is crappy,
because it's committee driven tech, but we're using it not for technical
reasons, instead we're using it for political reasons.

And it's worth doing and stopping promoting the proprietary variants (native
apps, basically).

~~~
yoz-y
Is it worth wasting energy on apps that are technically worse just for
political reasons?

For some, maybe. Still, on PCs you can always distribute the native
applications outside of the stores.

~~~
EamonnMR
That may not be the case for whatever replaces the PC though.

------
garganzol
I told you so. Never ever put yourselves into totalitarian traps of Big
Brother Stores. It will kill you eventually.

------
cptskippy
That's dumb, and I really like having apps like in the Store so that I'm
always running the latest version.

~~~
russdpale
Why though? Dont you want that control? What id your favorite app turns into
spyware?

~~~
cptskippy
> Why though?

There are certain pieces of software like Putty, 7-Zip, Arduino Studio,
Inkscape, Plex, and Notepad++ where I'd like to always have the latest
version. A few of those are in the store and keep themselves up to date.

> Dont you want that control?

Not really. There's quite a few pieces of software I want to run the latest
versions of for security reasons (e.g. 7-Zip and Putty), some where finding
the latest Windows installer is tedious (e.g. Gimp) others updated so
infrequently that I forget to check (e.g. Inkscape), and others that are
updated so frequently that it feels like I'm always running installers (e.g.
Notepad++). Plus I use no less than 4 different computers with that software
and it is a paint to make sure they're all updated. I'd rather just let them
get managed in the background.

> What id your favorite app turns into spyware?

I don't know what you're asking.

~~~
russdpale
> I don't know what you're asking.

I can understand your reasoning with all of those computers.

My question is specifically referring to something like uTorrent, that was so
great for so long then jumped the shark. It actually became much less secure,
and there are many examples of this happening all over the web.

~~~
cptskippy
That's a valid point and I do not recall doing the same with uTorrent. However
I eventually grew to not trust the older version I was running after a number
of security notices about the App. I eventually just gave up on it entirely
because I couldn't trust the old one and didn't want the new one.

I'm not advocating that Apps be available exclusively in the store, just that
I enjoy the convenience of the store for maintaining updates and would like
them to be there. To your point I would also like to be able to install them
outside of the store.

I think the reality is that doing autoupdates the way Firefox and Chrome
handle them is hard. Most small projects can't be bothered to even implement
it. That's where the store shines because it can implement and manage the
autoupdate functionality independently.

~~~
russdpale
I can honestly see the benefits of having the windows store do that for me.
Personally, as a developer, I'd rather roll that on my own... but only because
I'm so soured on these walled "stores" the giants have set up. I loathe the
playstore and fear that, without heavy curation, the windows store is going to
turn into the same exact thing.

In response, I went with the LTSB version of windows 10, which is absolutely
great. I went to use ganache the other month and they didn't have an .exe or
.msi (they do now fortunately) but it took a few to figure out how to sideload
the .appx and I'm not sure I ever got it installed correctly so I used the CLI
until they released a proper installer.

------
ndh2
Why not go with Shopify or any other platform if you happen to be unhappy with
this one?

------
h4b4n3r0
To be fair to MS I’m pretty sure a physical store also would not allow you to
circumvent their main profit making mechanism: markup. Ie if something is
selling at WalMart they probably won’t like if the package says “go to our
website and cut out the middleman”, seeing that their business model is, well,
being a middleman.

~~~
iamcreasy
I wish I could reply you in details, but the concern you have raised is not
correct, and it has been discussed already in the thread. I suggest you read
the thread of its entirety.

