I agree that these techniques are primarily for environment lock-down and constitute anti-competitive behavior. There can be an advantages to security in theor

I agree that these techniques are primarily for environment lock-down and constitute anti-competitive behavior. There can be an advantages to security in theory, but I don't think it is worth it to accept the downsides. For me the decision is made that I leave Windows development behind completely and I already found a new home on Linux. I still use Windows for some media consumption, but its place there is also threatened and slowly coming to an end. As for signing, we could have just used traditional certificates instead of these awful signing practices, but this is overall bad security in my opinion, that "accidentally" makes them a middle man for any software deployment.