This is something that I've noticed too. I really want to like this but they are claiming to charge people for apps that they don't own and are already free. If they said that they simply take care of all complicated hosting or simplified the process I'd be more optimistic about this.
They are charging for hosting, administration and development, not for the apps that are just branded and provided for the convienience. You can use any app you want, or use Librem-branded apps with other servers for free (both as-beer and as-freedom).
> I really want to like this but they are claiming to charge people for apps that they don't own and are already free.
Selling people collections of software (which you didn’t code yourself, you simply repackaged) on floppy disk or tape was an old-school practice in the Free Software world and generally considered perfectly fair.
Those were disks you installed and ran yourself. This is a hosted product that runs in a (not free) data center. It's perfectly legit to charge for the service of hosting an open source or free app.
They do say exactly that, and that's what you're paying for. If you'd like to host your own versions of those open source apps, you're more than welcome to.
