> In practice you can't really expect to distribute free or commercial macOS software without paying the $99 anual fee. Even outside the MAS.
I have a small free app (month calendar widget for the notification center) and it's self-signed. No one has had any problems running it — none that I'm aware of, anyway.
> Non tech users don't even understand what Gatekeeper is or how to disable it.
It feels like non-tech users at this point are used to computers acting up and being unreliable and thinking that everything is a virus. Windows users that installed an antivirus have had that same experience since about forever.
> Even in Catalina you need to open the terminal to enable the "everywhere" option and disable gatekeeper.
They've had this going on for a while. On Mojave too. Also it sometimes automatically reverts the setting to "only known developers" and you have to use another `defaults write` command to prevent that from happening in the future. This doesn't help with security, this is just plain annoying.
I have a small free app (month calendar widget for the notification center) and it's self-signed. No one has had any problems running it — none that I'm aware of, anyway.
> Non tech users don't even understand what Gatekeeper is or how to disable it.
It feels like non-tech users at this point are used to computers acting up and being unreliable and thinking that everything is a virus. Windows users that installed an antivirus have had that same experience since about forever.
> Even in Catalina you need to open the terminal to enable the "everywhere" option and disable gatekeeper.
They've had this going on for a while. On Mojave too. Also it sometimes automatically reverts the setting to "only known developers" and you have to use another `defaults write` command to prevent that from happening in the future. This doesn't help with security, this is just plain annoying.