Why would small developers work to prop up a giant who already has so much power imbalance wrt them that they pretty much cannot do anything if it decides to, say, yank their app from the store for uncertain reasons?
"Before the app stores" covers a long time. Were you selling in retail stores? Collecting checks in the mail from shareware on floppies? Selling online with other third party managed stuff? Selling online with your own credit card processing? Other?
Nope, just plain old share ware. From 2001 to 2012 or so. I used payment processors like eSellerate or later fast spring. Receiving money for your software and sending out an email with a license key wasn't black magic.
The App Store (Mac App Store for me) achieved only one thing for me: Make it more complicated (review process, sandbox) and less profitable (30% vs ~8% cut).
I still sell a good share of my software directly without having Apple's horrible review process in between. It's still easier (upload binary, update sparkle RSS feed, done) than the whole App Store review process.
> Why would small developers work to prop up a giant who already has so much power imbalance
Because the alternative to fighting that power is wielding it. Coalitions are temporary alignments of interests. They're a hallmark of democracies. Their mechanics are highly selective against dogmatists; generally a good thing. Unfortunately when it comes to communities with a high concentration of purists, this knack for pragmatism can backfire by driving disillusionment.
Put another way: do you see small developers benefiting more by allying with big developers against Apple?
