Show HN: Cliapp.store – An App Store for CLI Apps

The most important question for me looking at projects like git, httpie and youtube-dl being sold for 2,99€... Have they actually been submitted by their respective owner? If so kudos to this project for opening an additional revenue stream for opensource projects.<p>If that&#x27;s not the case, this seems like yet another shady project, like plenty posted recently (I remember a similar one based on the softwarestack used), where the name of big successful opensource projects is used to collect money on their behalf and afterwards when enough money is piled up, they are offered to take the money on terms set by the marketplace.

Most of the programs that you&#x27;re publishing on your &quot;app store&quot; have independent monetization channels, including direct donations from their users via <i>accounts that they control</i>. They might be surprised (and annoyed) to discover that you&#x27;re charging for their work, even if the majority of that money ultimately makes it to them.<p>As others have pointed out, you probably have the legal right to run this sort of store. However, you should <i>strongly</i> consider consulting each project before listing them -- you might find that many are hostile to this sort of platform, and would prefer not to be hosted on it.

Why should I pay you, whom will inevitably take a cut on top of the payment processing cut, when I can donate to the developer directly where only the payment processing cut exists? I.e. you arbitrarily have `jq` listed for 2.99 .. why?

&quot;You can try out Git for free. To use it regularly, you must buy a license.&quot;<p>Which license does this notice message refer to? This is completely wrong!

I appreciate the idea of allowing utility CLI programs to be monetised by their authors. But it does look at the moment like the site is charging for git, pandoc, etc.<p>Is any of that money going to the authors?<p>Of course it is technically legal to charge for these things. But it is unlikely to endear you to the community.

This sounds like you are trying to trick people into paying for free applications. Scummy.

All of these applications and a whole lot more are available in Homebrew as well. Which can be kept upgraded with Topgrade [1]<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;r-darwish&#x2F;topgrade" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;r-darwish&#x2F;topgrade</a>

I understand that this is flagged now, because the idea seems to have significant obvious problems. The discussion on this though and why those problems exist and what to do better would be good to continue however.

So this is literally monetisation [1] based on the work of Homebrew [2]?<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;feramhq&#x2F;cli-apps&#x2F;blob&#x2F;master&#x2F;git&#x2F;main.yaml#L23" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;feramhq&#x2F;cli-apps&#x2F;blob&#x2F;master&#x2F;git&#x2F;main.yam...</a> [2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;feramhq&#x2F;cli-apps&#x2F;blob&#x2F;master&#x2F;git&#x2F;main.yaml#L36-L37" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;feramhq&#x2F;cli-apps&#x2F;blob&#x2F;master&#x2F;git&#x2F;main.yam...</a>

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;agarrharr&#x2F;awesome-cli-apps" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;agarrharr&#x2F;awesome-cli-apps</a>

I really like the root need of this, paying for open source, but I think the execution is significantly off. It might be nice to see an open source foundation create something similar to how topgrade works, but for funding.

This is terrible. The pricing info page is completely misleading, and written in a way that obscures the fact that all of this software is available completely for free.

Can anyone explain to me in layman terms, how this is legal? I mean charging money for freely available open source tools, not owned by this site?

This is really shady and I don&#x27;t see advantages over a conventional package manager