In theory a cooperative of craftsman sellers not beholden to VCs could develop the marketplace software. But they will need to attract, retain, and manage software developers without being able to offer them any equity with "lottery ticket potential". Managing software engineers itself is not for the faint of heart, to put it mildly.
A cooperative of altruistic software developers could build marketplace software. Open source exists after all. Then someone will need to run this as a company. Perhaps as a non-profit?
It sounds possible. But I haven't seen a single marketplace run like this yet.
Even if we kept the original 5% fee, and kept it there - and kicked out the stupid resellers - we’d be making a lot of people happy. It really wouldn’t be hard to whip up something basic. It would be much harder to attract people to it and keep a user base, of course.
A cooperative of altruistic software developers could build marketplace software. Open source exists after all. Then someone will need to run this as a company. Perhaps as a non-profit?
It sounds possible. But I haven't seen a single marketplace run like this yet.