macOS says "“Zen Browser.app” is damaged and can’t be opened. You should move it to the Bin." :(
xattr -d com.apple.quarantine /path/to/app
edit: turns out they are describing this process here from a link on the macos download page:
Also while I understand some people have moral objections to the 100 dollar/euro registration fee, clearly a lot more than that has been spent in time to get the application to this stage, almost all apps for macOS distributing like this are notarized now, and with such a slick marketing page it just feels weird to then not spend a relatively small amount of money to make this immediately far more accessible. The instructions aren't hard to follow, but still make trying it out 10-100x harder.
Also it's tricky to get donations for something that literally prevents people using the application, no one is going to donate for the registration fee before even trying it, and once they've gotten through the installation process there's no incentive to donate for that anymore.
That being said, I’m sure a lot of OSS projects are willing to accept it if you personally chose to pay the fee.
yes I found that awkward as well
Until then as they escalate their extortion dialogs I’ll just normalize instructions on how to run dodgy looking shell scripts that bypass them on software I release for free.