In response to the announcement in late June禁止Microsoft has earlier clarified the practice of repackaging and selling for a fee apps that were originally open source or provided free of charge on the Microsoft Store, emphasizing that this is to prevent those with ulterior motives from gaining improper benefits.
According to Giorgio Sardo, general manager of Microsoft's applications, partners, and Microsoft Store business, this new policy, announced in late June and expected to be officially implemented on July 6, is mainly intended to prevent people from repackaging apps that were originally provided as open source and free and making them available through paid methods, causing users to pay to download them only to find that they can obtain them legally and for free elsewhere.
Therefore, from Microsoft's perspective, this policy is not intended to restrict free or open source apps from being listed on the Microsoft Store as speculated by the outside world, but rather to avoid unnecessary troubles. At the same time, it still encourages developers to upload free and open source apps to the Microsoft Store, allowing more people to download and use them.
However, such regulations may affect some independent developers who provide open source and free apps but also support their creations through funding. The reason is that Microsoft's new policy regulations are too general and can obviously lead to misunderstandings.
We absolutely want to support developers distributing successfully OSS apps. In fact there are already fantastic OSS apps in the Store! The goal of this policy is to protect customers from misleading listings. Thanks for feedback, we will review to make sure the intent is clear
— Giorgio Sardo (@gisardo) July 6, 2022
Currently MicrosoftAlready allowedDevelopers can upload apps designed for Win32 architecture, PWA, and Android platforms, thereby increasing the richness of content included in the Microsoft Store. It is no longer limited to apps designed for UWP (Universal Windows Platform) and even opens up apps from third-party software markets such as Steam, making the Microsoft Store a larger software market and increasing its usage rate.
