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OK, I get this. But look at it from the other point of view: how does a non-technical user determine if a binary download is malicious? And how, then, does Go

OK, I get this. But look at it from the other point of view: how does a non-technical user determine if a binary download is malicious? And how, then, does Google/Microsoft/Apple protect those users from their ignorance? Given that the internet is full of people attempting to get non-technical users to download malicious software, often my mimicking exactly the sort of site the OP has created, then is it really practical to insist that Google/Microsoft/Apple allow the OP's site to download software to a user's machine freely? The advantage of the middle-man is that it acts as a trust agent (not necessarily well, of course). If you download a malicious binary from an App Store, that is the App Store's fault for letting it on there in the first place.

thristian 7y ago
Sure, you need some kind of middle-man as a trust agent, but Google/Microsoft/Apple are not the only possible trust-agents, and their model is inherently biased towards certain useful software production models. Let's say I keep bees as a hobby, and I write some small piece of software that tracks and calculates something to do with honey production. I post it to my favourite bee-keeping forum, other people try it and like it, and when a new bee-keeper joins the forum they're often advised by forum regulars to try my software out too. That kind of software can be a huge help to people, but it's not a good fit for an appstore because it's never going to turn a profit, and at least on Apple's store (with the $99/year publishing fee) it'll drain money quite predictably and regularly. A bee-keeping forum will never be trusted by as many people as Google/Microsoft/Apple, but the people who do trust it probably trust it a lot more.