My issue is with the fact that FUTO wishes to have exclusive rights to monetise Grayjay. The public should have the right to vote with their wallets on who they want to maintain their software. If someone else can do a better job than FUTO, why should he not get paid? Yes, FUTO are the ones who spent money upfront to develop Grayjay in the first place, but they are also the ones from whom people will be buying at first. No one is going to pay Bob instead just because he changed the icon. But if FUTO were to drop the ball at some point in the future and Bob were to pick it up, why should Bob not be able to get paid?

Because there are companies who would to pay no dev costs, slap their branding on something, and monetize it, but who will also use their market clout (or walled garden control) to not provide a better product, but just make buying it from the actual developers less convenient, or limit interoperability with the original product.

We do not live in a world of conscientious consumers who will go out of their way to pay the developers who actually made something, we live in a world where whoever’s version is at the top of the app store gets the most downloads.

No one is going to pay Bob instead just because he changed the icon.

This is just ridiculously naive. When Bob is actually named ‘Amazon’, ‘Microsoft’, ‘Google’, etc, people will trust them more than random app developer company.