As a (satisfied) owner of a Purism laptop, I wish they would concentrate on just one thing and get that thing perfect, rather than spreading themselves thin with laptops, smartphones, security tokens, and now an app store. What do they have, 30 employees? For that many complex endeavors (including hardware development!), something is going to give. There is still a key privacy/security/openness feature promised for the laptop that is not complete. Though I can understand that their focus may have shifted to smartphones rather than laptops since smartphones seem to be a much bigger market nowadays.
I had emailed them 5 months ago about whether they planned such a store and whether it would be worth planning to make an app in time for the librem release, but did not hear back. This is the answer I suppose. The question is whether they plan to monetize it. I think they have to - there has o be a way for developers to pay their rent when working with free software. I hope they can pioneer something along those lines<p>How did the elementary app store pay off BTW? Are there any numbers available?
I wonder whether they're building it from scratch or leveraging some of the work put into other stores\app centers like Gnome's or Elementary's.
As another commenter has eluded to, I would love to see them propose some monetisation models for the store. Personally, I think they should make Patreon-style donations possible with a super-low barrier to entry (only 1 to 2 clicks to donate). Maybe they take a tiny (~2%) slice of every transaction to help manage the whole thing. Donations only imho. That would be awesome.
kinda ot: I almost bought a Librem (a few times)... but going without built-in ethernet is a show stopper for me. It's a fundamental feature for a hacker-friendly laptop.