Yeah, the Blink ssh/mosh client for iOS is GPL3 but costs $19.99 in the App Store. I'm about to pay someone with a developer account a few hundred bucks just to publish a free renamed build of it to the App Store, because that's ridiculous.
People's time is valuable, especially expert developers.
The 'Code' only part of the issue with respect to input cost. Someone has to maintain that dev. account, maintain their skills, stay on top of distribution policies, probably take on some legal risk, keep the build kind of up to day.
That takes skill. We mostly want it that way so that distribution is clean and clear and reasonable for those involved.
If it's a niche product, then $20 is not going to add up to a lot of money.
If it's a professional product, then $20 is basically $0 for all intents and purposes, it's the cost of a stapler on which case cost should not be a problem.
The AppStore is generally an open market, if $20 price is too high and someone is raking in big profits, someone can publish the same thing.
In the end, what we want to achieve is a price point that matches the material value creation involved in the 'maintenance of the build and distribution aspects'.
That's actually efficient, and what we want.
There's no such thing as 'free' - it's all time and labour and there are number of issues involved.
FOSS should be considered 'volunteer labour' which makes the underlying costs more apparent, the code and licensing is a distraction from that.
That $20 doesn't go to the dev. It goes to Apple, and, in the USA, requires doxxing yourself to the vendor to get a copy of free-as-in-freedom software.
That's unacceptable and repugnant, and it doesn't have any bearing on the volunteer labor.
There is such a thing that's free: free software. It was produced with volunteer labor (but doesn't have to be - look at golang!), but the end result/product is free-as-in-freedom and free-as-in-beer.
> what we want to achieve is a price point that matches the material value creation involved in the 'maintenance of the build and distribution aspects'.
No, what I want to achieve with this free software is that anyone be able to access it without barriers whatsoever, including payment.
You're not grasping the part where there is material work and labour in most parts of the value chain including maintenance, inspection, and distribution of builds.
Only 15% of that $20 goes to Apple - while that may be a few points to high, it's not egregious.
The rest of that money goes to the person responsible for maintaining the build, which is 'work'.
"That's unacceptable and repugnant, "
This is a completely naive view, tantamount to saying 'People should work for me, for free, because I said so, and it's repugnant for them not to!'.
"what I want to achieve with this free software is that anyone be able to access it without barriers whatsoever, including payment. "
For 'source code' - this is already possible, because 'source code' can fairly easily be provided 'for free'.
But a maintained and up-to-date build, for specific platforms, with all of the unavoidable regulatory overhead - has cost.
If you want that to be 'free' - again you're expecting someone to labour for you.
There's an easy answer to this -> it's $20 on the App Store.
If you want to do free labour and make it free, you can do that.
But otherwise this 'moral indignation' and 'repugnance' at people who are unwilling to labour for you, for free, is a problem.
https://blink.sh/
https://github.com/blinksh/blink
https://apps.apple.com/app/id1156707581