Let me just place this signpost in the bandwagon's way:
→» Users CAN run un-notarized apps if they WANT TO. «←
You just have to make us trust you as a developer.
→» Users CAN run un-notarized apps if they WANT TO. «←
You just have to make us trust you as a developer.
Telling your users to do that (+ any other steps if needed) might take less effort than shaking pitchforks at Apple (though they're certainly deserving of ire in other areas.)
A developer who doesn't want to put any effort into gaining trust doesn't sound like someone I should allow to run non-sandboxed code on my machine anyway.
:)
To reiterate: You don't have to notarize, if your users trust you enough to manually allow your app to run.
If it's important to you for users to trust your app, then there are ways to do that. One of those ways is paying the $100. There are other ways outside of that, though.
And it should be tough. The hurdle needs to be high enough to frustrate malicious actors getting people to run random executables they downloaded from the Internet.