Sorry, this discussion is basically about not using the Snap Store or having an alternative to. So the setup of the discussion would include the snap you are trying to distribute is not on the Snap Store.
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Itās very difficult to respond to the āknow whats better on my machine than I doā argument, because making choices is basically why we exist.
One of the hallmarks of the move to free software is precisely the ability to do whatever you want on your own system. Linux from scratch is a wonderful exercise in exactly that. Arch, and before it Gentoo, are very compelling variants on that theme. Iām glad all of that exists.
A long time ago I was able to use Linux that way to do some pretty good stuff in the world. I was grateful. But I was also mindful of the fact that, bluntly, it was too hard. I wanted more entrepreneurs to be able to build things on open source without having to figure out as much of the detail. And the way to achieve that was to take responsibility for the detail so that they donāt have to. Iām always entertained by the āUbuntu is for newbiesā slur, because it sort of misses the beauty of the work we do. Weāre there for newbies, and weāre also there for people who have figured out what they donāt need to figure out. Want to recompile the kernel? Sure you can, but I can tell you that 99.9999% of people donāt after a while, because itās not much value add.
This is no different. Really, it isnāt.
Think about it. Say you sit down to create a new store. As stated above, that isnāt a huge amount of work. But now you have an interesting dilemma for your users. That store is full of binary software that you didnāt compile. Are you going to take responsibility for that? Are you going to scan it and commit to removing anything that causes a problem? Or are you going to say to your users āOK, Iām giving you the ability to stick binaries on your system but you need to decide if you can trust themā.
We know the latter doesnāt work. If you say to people āhey now there are hundreds of repos out there you should decide which ones you trustā you are walking them into a cesspit of obscure and impossible decisions. And if you step up to do the work of taking responsibility, then you are asking people to trust you. Which makes you someone who āknows more than they do about the trust on their computerā.
Itās quite the dilemma.
I have opinions about lots of things I would like to see done differently in the world. But Iāve learned that the only things that matter are the ones I am willing to commit to doing something about, otherwise its hot air and trolling. Actually doing something about free software is a life commitment and there are quite a few people who have done that, and taken different positions in doing that, which is great. Naturally, perspectives will vary. Iām nevertheless proud to be focused on enabling publishers to reach Linux users, with a minimum of friction and security risks in bringing those two together, and I simply donāt know how to do that without taking some responsibility for the bit in the middle.
It isnāt interesting to recreate debs. We already have debs, with their strengths and weaknesses. Just recreating that is not something I would spend time on, or ask anybody else to spend time on.
It is interesting to try to build something new, which is complimentary to debs. This is our attempt to do that. Iām glad we have competition because we might not build the best widget. I doubt that competition would be around if we hadnāt set out to build this widget. So letās see 
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Thank you for sharing your valuable thoughts on the issue Mark.
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They say, āTurn the blind eye, and people will shutoff about it eventually.ā but when it comes to opensource community-driven by Linux, people wonāt shut off about it. NEVER.
They will have to move to another nice option. 
And by that time, it will be late to āopen upā for some people & realize.
After all, this is all driven by what discussed in forums, social platforms, community pages, wiki, etc.
An open store exists on GitHub but doesnāt yet work, if anyone really believes we need an open snap store please contribute to it (I would need to learn to program first and am clearly not motivated enough!): https://github.com/gjsman/opensnap (thanks @G.S.1)
Thanks Mark for addressing some of these controversial topics even though I know it takes time.
(Apologies for bumping this thread)
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A separate open-source implementation of a snap store has been started. You can read more details about it in this post:
https://forum.snapcraft.io/t/announcing-project-kebe-open-source-snap-store-start/25088/3
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Any updates on this? I really want to see this being open sourced