Introduction
The Extension Store is a platform where developers can sell commercial licenses to their RoboFont extensions.
Free & public
Dozens of open-source extensions are available to RoboFont users on GitHub. These extensions are offered for free by their developers, for various reasons: so they can be improved by others, to promote an idea, to establish a reputation and show their skills, or simply to have fun, do good and help fellow designers.
Whatever the motivation, developers of open-source extensions usually don’t get paid for their work. On top of that, they are expected to respond to support questions, bug reports and feature requests for free, too. This is a know problem in the open-source world, and it often leads to unmaintained and abandoned projects.
Paid & private
At the same time, many designers and foundries build custom extensions specially tailored for their needs. Doing so requires a significant investment of time (if the designer can code) or money (to hire or employ a programmer).
Such custom tools are often too specific to a particular workflow. Or they offer a competitive advantage over other designers and foundries, and are therefore too valuable to share for free. Whatever the reason, these extensions remain private.
Paid & public
The Extension Store opens a new road for RoboFont users and developers:
| platforms | free? | public? | dev gets paid? |
|---|---|---|---|
| GitHub / Mechanic | yes | yes | no |
| custom extensions | no | no | yes |
| Extension Store | no | yes | yes |
For developers, it offers a way to get paid for their work, so that developing public RoboFont extensions can become a sustainable activity.
For users, it offers a way to split the costs of creating new extensions: designers can join forces to fund the development of new general-purpose tools, from which everyone will benefit.