echo64@lemmy.world 3 months ago
To use this feature, developers will have to opt into the new App Store business terms, which means they will pay the Core Technology Fee of €0.50 for each first annual install over one million in the past 12 months.
lemmy_user_838586@lemmy.ml 3 months ago
Wait… So if you develop an open source app and don’t charge for it, and 10 million new users install it, you have to pay apple $500,000? Wtf?
becausechemistry@lemm.ee 3 months ago
Non-profit organizations, educational institutions, and governments are exempt from the fee. The full policy is here: developer.apple.com/support/core-technology-fee/
If you don’t plan to charge for it, you can also just publish through the existing App Store infrastructure, where there is no fee.
(I’m not being an apologist. There are so, so many shitty things about Apple’s implementation here, but this isn’t one. I believe the EU should blast Apple as hard as legally possible for the rest of their implementation which is intentionally terrible.)
cmhe@lemmy.world 3 months ago
“Non-profit organizations” that sounds like the minority of developers. Most projects are from single developers that just throw their project on github et al. and release it from there.
abhibeckert@lemmy.world 3 months ago
True but if you’re a for-profit developer, you can probably afford 50 cents per customer. Facebook, for example, has a “free” app that earned $134 billion last year. I’m not defending Apple, I think the Core Technology Fee is anti-competitive and I hope the EU tells them it’s illegal - but 50c is pocket change for nearly any for-profit app developer.
Small startups don’t pay (less than a million users), and most open source projects with more than a million users are non-profits. The ones that are not could become one or tie themselves to an existing non profit (such as the Apache Foundation, which provides funding and resources to almost 300 open source projects).
echo64@lemmy.world 3 months ago
What’s your logic here for this not being terrible?
Aatube@kbin.melroy.org 3 months ago
That's not what they said.
lemmy_user_838586@lemmy.ml 3 months ago
Ahh, Gotcha. I’ve never owned an apple product, so I don’t know how their walled garden works for app developers.
abhibeckert@lemmy.world 3 months ago
This is new territory and it’s changing every week.
Historically, the way it worked is Apple gives almost everything away for free except for a $99 per year fee developers have to pay. But developers who have certain business models (especially game developers) have to pay Apple a huge percentage of their income.
I’ve been an Apple developer since the 90’s - if you go back even further back in Apple’s history… Apple didn’t have a walled garden approach. They simply charged money for all their software and that was very successful. Not as successful as the walled garden but still healthy profits.
Aatube@kbin.melroy.org 3 months ago
Euros* which are worth more than dollars. That said, such a dev probably wouldn't meet the other requirements to distribute anyway, so they'll probably use the existing unofficial sideloading.
abhibeckert@lemmy.world 3 months ago
1 Euro is currently 1.09 US Dollars. So technically “more” but realistically they’re about equal.
unautrenom@jlai.lu 3 months ago
Well, in this case of 1 000 000 downloads, that would make a 50 000 dollar difference. Not really something ‘little’.