I don't have any concern about the type of currency used to pay.

A quick check of my screentime over the past few days shows only two apps which wouldn't benefit from this: DAVx and Syncthing. Both of these are essentially daemons I configured once, and ideally never see the app interface of ever again until I get a new phone. Otherwise, apps I benefit from are represented in the screentime of the past couple days.

Then I found that some apps, even though they were useful, didn't actually do much under the hood. Like say Frost for Facebook which is mostly a webview with few extensions. So I wanted to add a section for things that are mostly a "viewer". An additional example of such a thing is a media player: if you look 10h a day at videos, it's thanks to the content, not to the viewer.

And then, there are behaviours you maybe don't want to trigger, like getting people addicted. 2048 using the screentime metric would have gained a lot of money (and it does deserve a lot!), but IMO people who got addicted to it should give them less.

And what about apps that have paying variant on Google Play? Which deserves more money, the app that is simply free on fdroid and Play Store, or the app that is free on fdroid, but paying (or free reduced) on Play Store.

So, I spent few days trying to make something fair, and at the moment I believe that the most fair I can do is to give equally among all apps that I've used in the last 7 days.

In fact, I would argue that some of the most useful apps might be ones that we use less - because they accomplished the required goal.

Exactly.

Subscriptions make sense for dynamic content, and service. Fantastical and 1Password are examples of subscription-based platforms which were once buy to play (term from games industry).

However if you self host the data (you probably can and should) or sell your soul to the devil (Google etc) you paid for hosting. So a subscription for the software doesn't make sense from customer PoV. You essentially don't pay for service, compared to Disney+, World of Warcraft, or Netflix.

My first pass would be to do it based on screentime.

My second pass would be to give the screentime ratios to the user, allowing them to tweak the ratios themselves.

Absolutely. Look at what Humble Bundle does, where you can tweak the proportion of your payment that goes to various things. That's still quite novel.

Screentime is a really, really bad proxy for usefulness though. Weather apps, email clients, maps (without turn-by-turn directions), the alternative app I use to control my Hue lights, ... will starve, while the Kindle app and social media will get showered in money. That alternative camera app, hardly any screentime at all. My to do app shows me lots of notifications but gets very little screentime. Netflix however...

I know that. I don't want it as I stated above.

> And those seconds will be dominated by the tens of minutes I spend in other apps per day.

That was just an easy to understand example. The real money will be in maxing out total screen time. Such examples exist as Facebook, Netflix, or advertising driven platforms that hyper-optimize for watch-time or "engagement" to our detriment.

apple music, spotify, netflix, audible, kindle unlimited, etc.

I don't think there's necessarily a need for projects to be funded or paid for - giving back to the mobile ecosystem the same way we give back to the desktop ecosystem seems like a pretty fair way to go.

"A Linux distribution ... is an operating system made from a software collection that is based upon the Linux kernel and, often, a package management system."

When I read that, I realized just how fundamental the package manager is and it makes sense.

How do we give back to the desktop ecosystem?

Sounds counterproductive, to pay someone to host something that is meant to be hosted by yourself, but most often, I just need the option to move to selfhosted when time arrives.

Sure, I can host my own piwik, or gitea, or nexcloud (I do) and even (painfully) manage my mailserver and DNS with mailinabox. Out of principle. But the TCO of that is mountainhigh, if I'm honest. Tucking someone €9.99 a month to deal with one of these for me, would save me a lot, in the grand scheme.

Edit: what I'm trying to say: I'm convinced there is a businesscase there. There's money to be made in this area of FLOSS, which can trickle down into the upstream projects or be a businesscase as funding for the projects themselves even.

What about FLOSS-mobile applications?[0]

- FOSS is "Free + Open-Source"

- FLOSS is "FOSS + Libre"

[0] https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/262/what-is-t...

My personal belief is that we need the discourse of both the OSI and FSF because they appeal to different segments, and we need both the business community and people care about user rights to be in the movement if we want FOSS to succeed.

Example of what can happen