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Comment by ris58h | Hacker News Reader

As a FOSS developer I wish I could notarize it without paying $100/year to Apple.

You'd need a separate certificate, which at the moment will cost considerably more than $100. Also is your objection the $100 or merely paying Apple?

Having to notarize your own software is giving one company total control over you and your future. It is unacceptable. I do not develop versions for macosx since notarization anymore.

This is probably my biggest fear. One day Apple can revoke my certificate, and suddenly my apps stop working for everyone.

But this has not happened. You're basing a decision today on something that might or might not happen in the future.

"One day," Apple could do anything. One day, they could totally prevent installing things that are not notarized. One day, they could entirely prevent non-AppStore, non-sandboxed applications from running on macOS. They haven't, but they could and indeed all signs point to these being on the very long-term roadmap. Does this mean you stop writing Mac apps today?

> But this has not happened.

This has in fact happened: https://blog.charliemonroe.net/a-day-without-business/

In fairness it happened then unhappened due to a mistake. I think people are more worried about the sort of semi-arbitrary decision making associated with the App Store. But, to their credit, the macOS team have never used Gatekeeper that way. It's been >10 years that I've been reading predictions that they will, but they never did. That must count for something.

My app uses private API so it can't be distributed via AppStore due to Apple's policy. So in my case I would pay only for certificate and no other benefits. I've already spent tens of hours of my life developing the app and I don't want to add $100 payment every year to it.

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