So if you work with Drupal you may have heard about the idea of a Drupal app store, there are various views on in so thought I might put my idea down so here it goes.
Its clear from other App stores, such as the Apple App Store and Android Market, that people are willing to pay for applications and that they are getting used to it.
So there is the chance for Developers to make some extra money. But this will depend on the price of apps, for example paying £1 for the views module would earn a lot of money for merlinofchaos as views has a reported 269743 active sites using it (at the time of writing this post) and there are other modules with similar stats but there are many with much lower numbers.
1. The first issue that came to mind is that this could encourage developers to build and release their own versions of modules that are already released in the community just to try and get some money for it. Its not like this is new, the Apple App Store and Android Market are both full of countless fart machines. Now the good thing with this is that a user has choice but it also means the amount of time spent going through all the apps to find the one that fits your needs is time consuming. I know if I am faced with 20 apps for my Android phone that I will only install 3-5 max then end up settling for the one that does the best job and this is for free apps. How many people would pay for an app then download it only to find out that its useless then have to start the process again by paying for a different app.
2. Blocking the young newcomers to Drupal. Reflecting back on my student days the one activity I used to do was try new applications (content management sytems included), I started with wordpress and downloaded it and countless plugins. Now if I put myself back in that position but this time I had to pay for some of the plugins I downloaded then I can say that I would have downloaded a lot less modules, as there is no way I would pay money (even if it is a few pounds) for something just to try it out. This could be a major block for getting more people into Drupal, not just students. The only way I can think to overcome this would be creating student accounts however as soon you consider how on earth the account would be managed you realise it will never happen.
So as you might be able to tell from the above that I am not a fan of the idea, even if I could make some money from it as I think it will do more harm to the Drupal project than its worth.
These are my opinions, what are yours? Leave a comment below.
You can of course always follow me on twitter to get regular updates