"It's a useful tool used in the real world of business."
Tool? It does not sound like a tool, at least not based on your description:
"Need to see how long a company typically takes to pay?"
...sounds kind of like a credit rating service...
"Want to get and Federal work?"
...sounds like bureaucracy.
It sounds to me like DUNS is a service, not a "tool," and that they are the sort of service that slows everyone and everything down. It should come as no surprise that it is a pain for lone coders: it was designed for expansive bureaucracies, and it has the effect of further expanding those bureaucracies.
I have to wonder what it is that Apple hopes to gain by using this system. Why do they even bother to uniquely identify app developers? Why not just issue a signing key every time someone pays their fee? It sounds like DUNS is just another way for Apple to exclude small operations and focus on the large operations that make most of the popular apps in their app store.
Tool? It does not sound like a tool, at least not based on your description:
"Need to see how long a company typically takes to pay?"
...sounds kind of like a credit rating service...
"Want to get and Federal work?"
...sounds like bureaucracy.
It sounds to me like DUNS is a service, not a "tool," and that they are the sort of service that slows everyone and everything down. It should come as no surprise that it is a pain for lone coders: it was designed for expansive bureaucracies, and it has the effect of further expanding those bureaucracies.
I have to wonder what it is that Apple hopes to gain by using this system. Why do they even bother to uniquely identify app developers? Why not just issue a signing key every time someone pays their fee? It sounds like DUNS is just another way for Apple to exclude small operations and focus on the large operations that make most of the popular apps in their app store.