Also, what kind of "viable software business" has trouble paying $100 a year?
The issue isn't the money. The blog post was written in the context of the widely reported story of Apple threatening to terminate the developer account of Epic Games, which would prevent them from signing and notarizing their Mac software.
This part is key. It shows that Apple's signing and notarising requirement isn't about money, nor is it about security. Epic broke the rules of the iOS store, and now they'll be forbidden from developing on a completely different platform, just because Apple doesn't like them.
Apple has a single developer program for all platforms. Epic has been given a deadline to stop breaking the contract terms - submit a new version of the application which reverts the remotely activated payment logic.
This is the fundamental problem, in my opinion.
When Developer ID was introduced, it was supposed to be a mere formality, a cryptographic guarantee that an app was signed by a particular developer, to be used only for security purposes. At the time, nobody knew it would be used as leverage in an App Store dispute.
Epic didn't simply implement their own in-app purchase plan; they also remotely updated Fortnite to include it after it had passed app review (because Apple wouldn't have approved it, obviously). The whole point of app review is that Apple can assure its customers that apps are safe to run. Having apps that bypass the review by updating themselves subverts the whole process. You may not agree with the app review process, but it's clearly a feature that Apple regards as an important selling point.
Given that Epic has demonstrated a willingness to subvert the app review process, why should Apple allow such an untrustworthy developer to place its apps on any Apple platform?
(To be clear, Apple has said that they will gladly allow Epic back onto the App Store if they remove the private in-app purchase mechanism, so apparently Apple has not fully adopted this viewpoint -- at least, not yet...)
The point of my blog post wasn't to defend Epic, but rather to explain how difficult it would be for a developer to continue distributing software on the Mac without a code signature approved by macOS. The frequent suggestion is that users could "just right click", but it's not that simple.
Whether or not this is a good thing for most users is certainly arguable, but it still doesn't sit right that you have to pay Apple and get their permission to distribute macOS software that isn't presented to the user as likely malware.
Do you know how much $100 is in Iran?
It doesn't really matter, because for developers in Iran, the question becomes do you know how hard it is to pay US companies from Iran?
I used to speak regularly with an Iranian who was, among other things, a software developer. My general impression is that money was not nearly as big a problem as other things, thanks to the embargo.
Your comments don't quite fit with my understanding of things, which could be just my lack of knowledge about a lot of things. If you are Iranian and, thus, your primary language is Farsi, perhaps it's due to a language barrier.
I'm trying to bow out of this discussion and already deleted one of my comments. It seems like a rather lot of negativity over a minor observation on my part. So it doesn't seem like a good place to try to start a meaty discussion of open source in Iran, or I think that would be interesting to me personally, in spite of my limited knowledge of code and so forth.
Iran's economy has changed significantly in the past few years. University professors that used to make around ~60K USD a year just a decade ago are now making 8-12K USD a year today.
Money is definitely a problem, and even if you have the money dealing with American companies completely closing off everything is a pain.
Thankfully Android, being a little bit more open than Apple has allowed a ton of small software startups to become successful in Iran, while Apple has stifled them and has actively removed Iranian apps from the AppStore.
This brings back me to my original point that if we keep wanting Apple to keep control of what can be published and used on the iPhone then what happens when a questionable US government decides to start banning apps that help people organize? Or apps that help people combat and fight injustices?
Apple, keeping the strict control they have on the iPhone, is making the future of computing under a questionable state a dangerous thing.
It's been a few years since I've had any contacts in Iran. I wasn't aware the economy had gotten so much worse, so my apologies. My information is out of date, apparently.
I did look up some things about the embargo and open source platforms at one time. My knowledge of programming is limited. I know a little CSS and HTML and I run some websites, but I don't really think of myself as a "programmer." So I probably can't meaningfully add anything here.
I'm generally on your side. Thank you for the interesting comment.
If that's the point you want to make, there are much better ways to make it.
I don't think there's anything wrong -- or snarky -- with pointing out that there are whole countries out there where each and every developer would have as much trouble coughing up the necessary $100 as you would have had during your years of homelessness.
2. Your information regarding salary seems terribly outdated. There has been several sudden and dramatic losses of purchasing power and reduction in exchange rate for Iranian Rial, cumulatively by a factor of more than 7, during the past year. At the current exchange rate of ~220,000 IRR to 1 USD, the monthly salary of an Iranian developer would be around ~160 USD a month. Breaking the 100MM IRR/~454 USD barrier would be difficult for most developers. So even if the sanctions were lifted tomorrow, only large corporations would be willing to spend 100 USD at the current exchange rate, not independent developers.
Source regarding salary [in Farsi]: https://jadi.net/2020/02/programmers-97-stats/
It's surprising how many people have forgotten that software development and starting out new projects wasn't always for an endgoal of monetizing it.
I looked at your website you have linked on your bio as well. You've never even worked in Iran.
Stop lying.
Edit: this comment was a misunderstanding, ignore please.
$100 for half a week of work would be a lot. People who think otherwise live in a bubble.
Much less than a Mac that you need to develop macOS software.
With a gate like the developer account that's far less possible.
It's also easy to buy a mac laptop from the blackmarket in Iran (since Apple can't legally export their laptops there), but you can't really do that with a developer account.
If this is a problem, projects can join together into one large app.