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I don't think that's a problem for them, they don't appear to care if people don't buy it there. The issue is not people not buying it, it's a new type of user coming in, who is a _customer_ and therefore expects things that they have not had to offer before.

Likely not going to backfire, no.

Whoever forks and distributes it for free needs to set up the infrastructure, websites, community forums etc etc. It is not cheap in both money and man-hours.

Adding to that, they need to have the persistence to continue running and maintain the fork for years to come.

If they stop providing a signed binary outside the Mac Store (IDK if they did), then this is the only safe way to get it other than a self compile. Add in auto updates and supporting the foundation and it seems reasonable.

Why would it backfire? They're not taking away the free offering, they're just putting a paid offering in the App Store for people who want to download it that way.