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4 Commits
| Author | SHA1 | Message | Date | |
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 gramps
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e7cded6879 |
docs: pricing ruled — $10/mo + $400 lifetime, and the 15% fee is verified for subscriptions
Reconcile the pending doc edits with the creator's actual ruling, and close the revenue-share question that was blocking the monthly price. Verified from the App Developer Agreement v8.10 PDF itself (downloaded and text-extracted, not a search excerpt). Section 6(b) has only three tiers: 6(b)(i) 15% for Apps and their In-App Products *not listed in* 6(b)(iii); 6(b)(ii) 12% Games-only; 6(b)(iii) 30% for Xbox console apps/games, Xbox non-subscription IAP, and Windows 8/Phone 8. LlamaCasty is a Windows PC App, so 6(b)(i) governs BOTH tiers -- there is no subscription surcharge. The agreement's own changelog (v8.0, Oct 26 2017) states it outright: "implement the 85/15 revenue share for non-Game subscriptions." => $10/mo nets $8.50 (~$102/yr); $400 lifetime nets $340. Also confirmed: the 15% applies after VAT/GST (Net Receipts definition), payouts are monthly above a $50 threshold, and no better small-indie rate exists in the standard terms. Creator ruling recorded: $10/mo subscription or $400 lifetime, no annual, no .99. This supersedes the 2026-09-21 one-time $29 -> $49 model. Two obligations ADA 6(h) attaches to the recurring tier, recorded because they change its risk profile and are the reason lifetime is the hedge: we must fulfil the subscription for the entire period as marketed (on breach Microsoft may refund the full amount plus taxes in its sole discretion), and raising the price disables auto-renew -- so $10 is effectively locked for the product's life. Stale facts fixed in the same change rather than appended: - research-store-certification.md: IARC was 11.11.1/11.11.2 in one table and 10.11.1 in another; corrected to 10.11.x. - research-store-certification.md: policy 10.8.1/10.8.2 still asserted "Polar explicitly permitted" and "tick the third-party purchase box". Void now that Store IAP is the route and Polar is being torn down. - task-48: the working YouTube demo account (10.3.1) was accidentally dropped from the certification list during the Store-IAP edit. Restored -- a reviewer cannot use the app without one. - MyMistakes.md: the verified-fact-vs-decided-outcome lesson now closes its loop (the creator did rule the way the research pointed), and records the over-correction that followed. Docs-only. No code, no build, no tests. |
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gramps
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b2036a38e8 |
docs: no annual tier — Microsoft does not pro-rate, and that is unfixable from our side
The creator raised it as instinct: "who hasn't been screwed over cancelling a sub early to be told that the extra six months remaining are your loss?" Checking the mechanism confirms it, and worse than expected. Microsoft's general position: "Digital goods like apps, add-on content, subscriptions... aren't refundable unless the offer or applicable law states that you're eligible for a refund." Pro-rated refunds on cancel exist only in Canada, Denmark, France, Israel, Korea, Turkey (all lengths) and Finland, Germany, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal (renewals only). Critically: "monthly subscriptions and initial (pre-renewal) purchases aren't eligible for a prorated refund." A first-year annual subscriber who cancels in month 2 loses months 3-12, in most countries, and the developer cannot refund it. That is verbatim the trap the creator named, so we must not build it. => monthly only. Max loss $10, max grievance a rounding error, one fewer product to declare, less support surface. The chargeback argument gets stronger, not weaker: a customer down $89 on an annual cliff disputes through their bank, which is frozen funds and account risk against a solo dev. Monthly bounds that at $10. Also records two rulings: - No .99 prices. "Let's stop with the x.99 stuff - I find that irritating. Just say: ten bucks a month." The convention only makes a price look cheaper, which is incoherent for a brand sold on honesty and no-dark-patterns. - No feature gating, now argued as revenue rather than taste: the free tier's reach is the funnel and the branding flash is an ad running inside other people's content. Pricing model itself stays OPEN in TASKS.md — $10/mo is the lean, and a lifetime product (~$300, the hedge against the no-moat renewal problem) is undecided. The Store revenue share is still unverified: confirm the net, not the list. MyMistakes.md records the actual error: I had offered "just refund anyone who asks" as a mitigation without checking who holds the authority to execute it. Store refunds run through Microsoft, not the developer. The check that followed is what produced this constraint. MONETIZATION.md got the full analysis but is gitignored, so it stayed local. |
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gramps
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85fad1ab79 |
docs: distribution route decided — Microsoft Store MSIX + Store IAP
Creator ruling 2026-09-27. Criteria, verbatim: "zero headaches, minimal maintenance (for me) while still providing accountability and a reasonably easy upgrade flow." Route A is the only combination where all four are solved by handing the work to Microsoft rather than to a certificate vendor: $0/yr, no certificate, no HSM, no annual renewal, no SmartScreen ramp — plus Store auto-update, Store-side payments/entitlements/refunds/support, and Microsoft review as the accountability layer. The rejected options and their reasons stay in research-store-certification.md §3 so a later session reads the ruling instead of re-deriving it. What this deletes: - The entire licensing backend. PolarLicenseService, PolarLicense, MainViewModel.License.cs (PremiumUrl, customer portal, the OfflineGracePeriod = 14 days subscription-era artifact, renewal/lapse copy) and the wrong "Polar unlocks alerts" string all become dead code. IsPremium is derived from the Store entitlement instead of an HTTP call, which also removes the whole "network flaky -> app thinks I'm expired" bug class. - Velopack, the update URL, and the self-hosted droplet — the Store updates. - Distribution.md's premise: Polar as the distribution backbone, Polar file hosting, and code signing as our problem. The IP-protection sections (1, 5, 6, 7) still stand and the build-posture ceiling is unchanged. What does NOT change: the entitlement. Free gets everything; the branding flash stays the only paid delta. Store IAP changes how IsPremium is obtained, never what it gates. Still open, deliberately: the price. The Store revenue share is unverified (do not assume a percentage), and MONETIZATION.md's $29 -> $49 one-time decision is re-opened against a fresh instinct toward ~$99/yr. No price encoded yet. The first code unit is unchanged: bundle ffmpeg (TASK 48 item 1). That clears the one hard certification gate and fixes a real user-facing 404. MARCOM.md and MONETIZATION.md were edited too but are gitignored by design, so those changes stayed local. |
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gramps
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e78c58fc28 |
docs: bank the Windows Store + signing research, and fix the dead EV-certificate line
The distribution answer existed only in conversation, so every session re-derived it. It is now in the map, and the route decision is explicitly parked as the creator's. new TASKS/research-store-certification.md — Store Policies 7.20 + MSIX packaging: which policies bind, which don't (and why), cert economics, camera/mic gating layers, YouTube age + COPPA, the 11.12 UGC judgment call. Two real defects surfaced, neither fixed (docs-only unit): - FfmpegLocator downloads an unsigned exe from GitHub and runs it. That is policy 10.2.2 (dynamic code inclusion) verbatim, and it is the root cause of the 2026-09-01 404 — the pin aged out of BtbN's 14-day retention on the creator's first real recording attempt. -> TASK 48 item 1, not Store-conditional. - Distribution.md:318 recommended a $400+/yr EV cert for a SmartScreen bypass Microsoft removed in March 2024. Fixed; had it shipped it would have cost $400+/yr to buy what $150 buys. Also new: TASKS/task-48 (checklist, carved out of TASK 36 item 6) and TASKS/task-49 (chat profanity filter, not blocked). ai.md gains the durable invariants — full trust or recording breaks silently, chat is rendered never stored — plus a correction to the FFmpeg locator section. MyMistakes.md records the lesson: a policy citation is a claim about scope, not just text. MARCOM.md got the privacy-copy guard but is gitignored by design, so that edit stays local and did not travel here. |