@cgutjahr
About the last thing the Amiga needs is an "app store". Instead of encouraging more commercialisation - which in our case just means one more round of milking the few remaining enthusiasts - we should encourage more open source development.
And kill for
all time any possibility of a commercial incentive to create Amiga&alike specific applications. There is no incentive now, no userbase, nothing that could entice a developer other than love for the platform. It is not outside the realm of possibility that this could change and a developer could make money from an Amiga&alike product. In an ideal world this should be the norm rather than the exception. It should be a goal worth striving for as it is the only way to advance the platform significantly. I am not a raving fanboy that believes Amiga will take over the world any time soon, but believe in a strategy that should improve the applications situation immensely.
Tell me, why shouldn't an Amiga developer make a buck, especially if they deserve it, in furthering the platform? The Apple app-store and its proliferation of apps is often seen as the yardstick of success against other mobile platforms. It has made the iPhone platform the success it is, and any such endeavour catering to Amiga&alike platforms in the same fashion, could likely do the same thing.
Indeed, I would be a proponent of an app-store that collects a fee, even on free software, giving the possibility for the user to assign that fee to a particular bounty. Money is the only thing that is going to take Amiga&alike software to the next level. If you want free software perhaps AROS is your best bet, but if you're running a commercial Amiga&alike system, then it stands to reason that you would be supportive of commercial quality software.
You want to encourage open-source application development, which is your perogative, but you know most of that is going to come from Linux, and if all you wanted was Linux apps, then I'm at a loss to explain why you'd be using an Amiga&alike. I am not against open source perse, rather the reliance on it for everything.