I deal with this every day, because we only notarize our electron app in CI if we're building the master branch or an RC branch. I don't see it mentioned in the article, but what gets me every time is that the "right-click" trick only works the second time you try to launch the app. The first time, right-click or not, MacOS won't let you launch the app.

I do wish Apple had a free tier for open source projects, just like many other tools on the web.

As an alternative, I wish there was an easy way to "sponsor" open source projects for this sort of thing. (I guess there is in some cases, but it's pretty hit or miss)

On Windows, although it's pretty easy to run unsigned applications, it's a huge pain to install unsigned 64 bit drivers, even if it's just the inf file that's custom. I've ended up signing open-source drivers several times with my own code signing certificate (a few hundred bucks every few years) although I haven't distributed the result. Drivers for things like USB SDRs.