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And if they did get $600 in donations in the last year... they should dedicate all of that to the Mac build? Even if they've already spent those funds on hosti

And if they did get $600 in donations in the last year... they should dedicate all of that to the Mac build? Even if they've already spent those funds on hosting and other expenses? A user of a free product telling the developer of said free product how the developer should be spending the money that said user isn't giving them takes a special kind of entitlement.

comex 10y ago
Hold on… your premise doesn't make sense. Apple's SDK only officially runs on Mac - but that applies to the entire build process, not just codesigning. Anyone who is already producing a Mac build either has access to a Mac build host, which they can also use to sign, or is using third party tools to cross-compile from another OS. In the latter case, there is also a third party tool capable of signing binaries: https://github.com/saucelabs/isign https://github.com/saucelabs/isign You do need to pay the $99/year for the certificate, but it shouldn't be necessary to buy hardware just to sign things.
- JohnTHaller 10y ago
  It's worth noting that you need access to a Mac you can trust to setup your Apple developer credentials on as well as iSign and then export your credentials and certificate from each time you get a new certificate. It's likely you won't be able to do this in the Apple store. While you or I may have a colleague or trusted friend we could do this with, many developers will not.
  - comex 10y ago
    It does say that in the readme, but I don't think it's actually necessary: you can get certificates and provisioning profiles through the web portal without going through Xcode. (For certificates, it has you upload a standard CSR file.) Though developers may not know that… Admittedly, if you don't have a Mac build machine, (a) you can't test your builds, and (b) you can't use the official SDK (including, e.g., system header files) without violating the terms of service. Not that many people care about that, but if you don't mind ToS violations you may as well just install pirated macOS in a VM (which is easy enough in practice). Perhaps Apple deserves blame for not having a legal way to run a macOS VM on non-Apple hardware; certainly it makes life harder for open-source developers that want to play by the rules. Still, these obstacles have nothing to do with signing.
h1d 10y ago
A developer should feel a little responsible about the product if it has a large amount of users... It's simply gaining bad reputation for the developer with such news because of saving $100 a year. If the developers are all students or something and can't pay for that, please let me know if there's a page asking for it and I'll pay or any of the other 1000 users who can.
danieldk 10y ago
A user of a free product telling the developer of said free product how the developer should be spending the money that said user isn't giving them takes a special kind of entitlement. There is a very simple solution. Get a dev program membership. Sign and sandbox the application and make it available in the Mac App store for $1.99. People who want a signed, sandboxed Handbrake pay the equivalent of a cup of coffee. People who want to play Russian roulette can download Handbrake for free on the web page. Given that Handbrake is extremely popular, that small fee will probably cover the $99 per year plus a Mac Pro (or two) within no time.

comex 10y ago

Hold on… your premise doesn't make sense. Apple's SDK only officially runs on Mac - but that applies to the entire build process, not just codesigning. Anyone who is already producing a Mac build either has access to a Mac build host, which they can also use to sign, or is using third party tools to cross-compile from another OS. In the latter case, there is also a third party tool capable of signing binaries: https://github.com/saucelabs/isign https://github.com/saucelabs/isign You do need to pay the $99/year for the certificate, but it shouldn't be necessary to buy hardware just to sign things.

JohnTHaller 10y ago
It's worth noting that you need access to a Mac you can trust to setup your Apple developer credentials on as well as iSign and then export your credentials and certificate from each time you get a new certificate. It's likely you won't be able to do this in the Apple store. While you or I may have a colleague or trusted friend we could do this with, many developers will not.
- comex 10y ago
  It does say that in the readme, but I don't think it's actually necessary: you can get certificates and provisioning profiles through the web portal without going through Xcode. (For certificates, it has you upload a standard CSR file.) Though developers may not know that… Admittedly, if you don't have a Mac build machine, (a) you can't test your builds, and (b) you can't use the official SDK (including, e.g., system header files) without violating the terms of service. Not that many people care about that, but if you don't mind ToS violations you may as well just install pirated macOS in a VM (which is easy enough in practice). Perhaps Apple deserves blame for not having a legal way to run a macOS VM on non-Apple hardware; certainly it makes life harder for open-source developers that want to play by the rules. Still, these obstacles have nothing to do with signing.

h1d 10y ago

A developer should feel a little responsible about the product if it has a large amount of users... It's simply gaining bad reputation for the developer with such news because of saving $100 a year. If the developers are all students or something and can't pay for that, please let me know if there's a page asking for it and I'll pay or any of the other 1000 users who can.

danieldk 10y ago

A user of a free product telling the developer of said free product how the developer should be spending the money that said user isn't giving them takes a special kind of entitlement. There is a very simple solution. Get a dev program membership. Sign and sandbox the application and make it available in the Mac App store for $1.99. People who want a signed, sandboxed Handbrake pay the equivalent of a cup of coffee. People who want to play Russian roulette can download Handbrake for free on the web page. Given that Handbrake is extremely popular, that small fee will probably cover the $99 per year plus a Mac Pro (or two) within no time.