Build a Firefox app and sell it anywhere

The Firefox Marketplace for Firefox OS may look similar to the iOS Apple Store or Google Android Play Store but there is something different lying under the hood for developers. It does not lock you into Mozilla or into using a Firefox OS phone for apps you create.

The Firefox market enables developers to sell a web app that will run on any open web device by way of the receipt protocol. Non-Mozilla marketplaces can participate in selling apps on Firefox OS out of the box by implementing the receipt format and users won’t notice anything different when running a paid app from either store.

When other devices start to support the receipt protocol then theoretically you could pay for an app once and run it everywhere. There is, of course, a chicken vs. egg problem here so Mozilla hopes to be the egg that helps prove out the decentralized receipt concept and iterate on the protocol. Mozilla invites other vendors to help us work on getting receipts right so that paid apps are as portable and “webby” as possible.