Size of the user base

[TRS-80]

What's wrong with yes to all these things? There is no conflict between having strong convictions about free software, working on interesting problems, having an application idea, surveying the market, working hard, and making a living by selling things you've made.

As you've astutely pointed out, I'm very much interested in ways to make money with free (freedom) software, since, first and foremost, I have a family to support. This is why the give-it-away-for-free-then-ask-for-donations model is not interesting to me.

Well, more power to you, if you can pull it off.  But it can be challenging.

Some F/LOSS developers are lucky to have a job in academia or elsewhere where their employer let them work on their pet project.  This is the case with Pandoc for instance (surely among others).  Others work at companies doing F/LOSS like Red Hat (and many others) where the company is selling some commercial product (or more likely, a service).  But you could do that yourself, as well.

As a matter of fact, funding of F/LOSS projects has been a sort of interest of mine for a long time.  I wasn't sure where you were coming from which was why I asked.  Drew DeVault has written about it on his blog a bit, he says what I said above but there will be more context and ideas there for you to ponder.

But it's hard selling the product (software) when the license specifically allows for making copies of it.[0]  Support you can sell, though, and many companies do that.

[0] There is actually nothing in the GPL preventing you from selling the software .  You just have to make sources available.  For a lot of people nowadays, it's probanly easier to pay $3 on some app store than compile it themselves and maybe this is viable (not sure).  I know Conversations for instance is few bucks on Play Store, but free if you get it from F-Droid.

That "platform" being of course GNU/Linux itself, which is by far the most widely used "platform" in the world, in pretty much every area except PC / desktop.[1]  Which is a more accurate / useful view, IMO.

I am just curious if you would consider Android also as a part of the "platform". After all it does use the Linux kernel and runs on a billion+ devices. Besides that is easier to build for and deploy on Android rather than Linux which is very fragmented.

Well to be honest, yes I was including Android in order to get to my "most used" figure (although maybe we get there without? not sure honestly).

Although in practice my experience has been that it's just close enough to real GNU/Linux to get you excited about it, but not close enough to actually do most of the things you might want to do with your device (like you can do on a regular GNU/Linux device).  Lots of little paper cuts, disallowed things, or juuuuust different enough to make them a hassle.  And it has slowly but steadily gotten worse over the years.  LineageOS not supporting VoLTE was the final straw for me[1] and that was one of the main things that made me decide to buy a PinePhone.

[1] Nothing against them, quite the contrary.  They (and CyanogenMod people before them, probably mostly the same people) made the Androd platform bearable for many years.

Your message makes me wonder if it is easy to distribute and install applications outside of the Play store... because that's a prerequisite to a bright future. I also wonder if Android is a plain kernel or something bespoke or cut down. Can I use all of glibc?

Sadly the Android devices that people actually hold in their hands are riddled with predatory software. It takes a PhD in Infinite Menus to toggle tracking off, you'll miss most of it.

Can I run Android on the Pinephone? If not, why not? Surely if it was truly a good mobile GNU/Linux that would be the case.

Now you are getting close to what the problems actually are on Android.  No real GNU userspace like normal, full GNU/Liinux.  Also the way these SoC work are that they are throwaway consumer devices, released frozen to some old kernel and never updated.  All manner of dirty hacks and proprietary crap, neither which will ever get mainlined (and therefore, no long term support in Linux).  Because you are supposed to be a good consumer and just throw it away and purchase a new device every year or two in accordance with your carrier's business model.

To answer your question about release outside Play Store, yes, check out F-Droid.  Although users will need to "allow third party sources" which your average muppet seems to have trouble with.  And how much longer will Google/Alphabet allow it?  They totally control the platform, after all (this is the real problem).

And yes, I consider Android a completely predatory (good word!) and hostile platform at this point.

I guess you probably can (get Android running on PinePhone) but maybe now you understand why it's sort of like: why bother?  We have an opportunity now to make something so much better.