Locara

24 — Monetization

How Locara makes money, doesn’t make money, and never will make money. Capture this explicitly so future maintainers can’t quietly drift.

Position

Locara takes 0% from app developers. Forever. The framework, runtime, registry, and review pipeline are free for everyone — publishers and users.

The framework + registry are sustainable as a small operation. Phase-3 opex is < $100/mo (see 18-phasing.md). Sponsorship + the founder’s labor cover it indefinitely.

Optional paid services exist to give the project a sustainable revenue base if it grows beyond the indie scale. They are explicitly additive, not gating.

What’s free, forever

  • The Locara framework (@locara/sdk, @locara/components, etc.).
  • The Locara CLI.
  • The Locara runtime (the Tauri shell + plugins).
  • The Locara website (locara.app) and the optional Locara Manager utility (phase 3+, if shipped).
  • The official Locara registry — both publishing to it and downloading from it.
  • The official model registry (curated model manifests).
  • The official tool registry (curated wasm tools).
  • The CI build pipeline for publishing.
  • All documentation, tutorials, source code.

Apps publishing to the registry pay nothing. Users installing apps pay nothing (to Locara — they may pay the app developer, but that’s between them).

How app developers monetize their apps (Locara takes nothing)

Apps charge users via channels Locara doesn’t touch:

  • Mac App Store. Apps published to MAS go through Apple’s payment system. Apple takes 15–30%. Locara takes nothing.
  • Stripe / Lemon Squeezy / Paddle / Gumroad. Direct sale via the developer’s own commerce. Locara takes nothing.
  • License keys / freemium unlock. App ships free; paid features unlock via an entered license key. Implementation up to the developer. Locara takes nothing.
  • Paid app via Locara registry direct download. Developer can sell via their site, distribute the .locapp outside the registry. Locara takes nothing.
  • GitHub Sponsors / Open Collective (for the developer). Developer’s own audience funds them. Locara takes nothing.

Locara is not a payments processor. We don’t have your banking info. We don’t see your sales numbers. We don’t take a cut.

This is a deliberate choice. App-store rev splits (Apple’s 15–30%, Google’s 15–30%) attract regulatory attention and developer resentment. By not entering that game, Locara avoids both.

These are possible revenue lines for the project, gated by clear principles:

  • They are always opt-in for both developers and users.
  • They never degrade the free experience.
  • They never gate features that should be standard (e.g., the “fully local” badge is always free; you can’t pay to upgrade your privacy claim).

1. Verified-privacy certification (potential, phase 4+)

A paid certification process for apps in regulated industries (legal, medical, financial) where the publisher wants a third-party attestation that the app’s privacy claims hold up.

  • Publisher pays an audit fee (~$X annually).
  • Locara reviewers (or a contracted firm) inspect the app’s source + behavior.
  • A “Locara Verified Privacy” badge is awarded.
  • Renewable; subject to revocation on findings.

Phase 4+ at earliest. Only viable when there’s enough regulated-industry adoption to justify the audit infrastructure. Estimated price point: hundreds of dollars per audit.

2. Enterprise registry features (potential, phase 4+)

Self-hosted Locara registries for enterprises that want internal-only app distribution:

  • Hosted by Locara on their behalf (vs. the OSS self-host option, which remains free).
  • Includes: SSO, audit logs, role-based access, private model registry, SLAs.
  • Subscription priced by org size.

The OSS self-host is always free. The paid offering is just convenience for orgs that don’t want to run it themselves.

3. Sponsor tiers (open from phase 0)

Voluntary sponsorship via GitHub Sponsors / Open Collective. Suggested tiers:

TierMonthlyRecognition
Individual$5Listed on sponsors page
Friend$50Plus name in release notes
Patron$500Plus logo on website (small)
Corporate$2000+Plus logo on website (larger) + dedicated comms channel

Sponsorship gives no decision-making influence. Sponsors don’t get private builds, accelerated reviews, or feature priority. They get recognition and the satisfaction of supporting a project they use. That’s it.

4. Locara-branded merch (low priority)

T-shirts, stickers, mugs. Tiny revenue, mostly community-building. Worth doing if there’s demand.

What Locara will never do

These are explicit guardrails. If a future maintainer is tempted under business pressure, they should treat the temptation as a signal to step back:

  • Take a percentage of paid app revenue. Not now, not at scale.
  • Charge to publish. Free for everyone.
  • Charge users to install. Free.
  • Run ads. Anywhere.
  • Sell user data. We don’t have any.
  • Sell aggregated install data. Not even “anonymized.”
  • Telemetry. Zero phone-home; this is the privacy thesis.
  • Exclusive distribution deals. No paid placement, no app-store-exclusive features.
  • Pay-to-play in the catalog. Featured placement is editorial, not paid.
  • Premium features in the OSS framework (i.e., open-core where the open part is crippled).
  • Investor capital with control. No VC equity that creates exit pressure.

Refund expectations for paid apps

If an app charges users (via MAS, Stripe, etc.), refunds are between the user, the app developer, and the payment processor. Locara has no involvement.

But: the registry’s app-page template surfaces the developer’s refund policy as a structured field. Apps without a clear refund policy are flagged. Steam-style (“refund within X days, under Y minutes used”) is the recommended pattern.

If a user is fraudulently charged (e.g., the app stops working, the developer disappears), they have recourse via:

  1. The payment processor’s chargeback mechanism.
  2. Locara’s takedown process if the issue meets policy thresholds.

Locara is not a court of last resort, but we’ll mediate where it’s clear.

Pricing transparency for paid services

If Locara ever introduces a paid service (verified-privacy cert, enterprise registry, etc.):

  • Pricing is published on the website, not negotiated case-by-case.
  • The free tier (or free alternative) is clearly described alongside.
  • Sales conversations don’t lead to better deals than the public price.
  • Discounts are formula-based (academic, nonprofit, low-income country), not arbitrary.

Sustainability math

For phase 3 (year ~1), the project’s costs:

Cost$/mo
Domain$3
Apple Developer Program$9
Cloudflare R2 + Pages$0–30
Postgres (Neon free tier)$0
Email (Fastmail)$5
GitHub (free for OSS)$0
Total~$20–50/mo

Founder labor: substantial, donated.

To break even on out-of-pocket costs, Locara needs:

  • ~10 individual sponsors at $5/mo, or
  • 1 patron at $50/mo, or
  • a single grant of $1k covering a year.

All achievable. The project does not need to be a business; it needs to be a sustained craft.

When the math changes

If user / developer count grows beyond what one founder + sponsorship can sustain:

  • Phase 4 evaluates: does verified-privacy certification have demand?
  • Are there enterprises asking about hosted registries?
  • Do volunteers want to be paid for sustained work?

At that point, one of the optional paid services may activate, and revenue starts paying for actual costs (CDN bandwidth at scale, contracted security audits, paid maintainer time).

This is never triggered by external pressure (investor mandate, competitive panic). It’s triggered by demand from the user base.

Public commitment to founders & maintainers

Maintainers of an OSS project shouldn’t burn out for free.

  • The project lead is allowed to take a stipend funded by sponsorship + paid services revenue, transparently disclosed.
  • Sustained maintainers (post phase 4+) may be paid for hours worked, again transparently.
  • Compensation is modest and disclosed annually.
  • Compensation is not tied to outcomes (we don’t pay-for-performance contributors; that distorts incentives).

This is normal in healthy OSS projects (Tailwind Labs, Sindre Sorhus, Anthony Fu, etc.) and prevents the founder-burnout pattern that kills indie projects.

Open questions

  • (open) Should sponsorship recognition be visible by default, or opt-in for the sponsor? Probably visible-by-default with opt-out, since visibility is part of what people sponsor for.
  • (open) What’s the right fee for verified-privacy certification when it launches? Depends on phase-4 market demand. Range: $500–5000/audit.
  • (open) Should paid services have their own brand (separate from “Locara”) to keep the OSS pure? Probably no — Locara is one brand; paid services are clearly tagged.

Cross-references