To even be able to sign your application to run on OS X, you need to pay 99 dollars. And agree to Apple's terms. This is pure FUD. You only need to sign apps

To even be able to sign your application to run on OS X, you need to pay 99 dollars. And agree to Apple's terms. This is pure FUD. You only need to sign apps if you are planning on distributing them as pre-compiled binaries, and even then the end user can deactivate gatekeeper in case you haven't signed your app. If you are writing apps for yourself, you can just compile normally, and deactivate Gatekeeper on your system. This holds equally if you wish to distribute your app to friends and family (telling them to deactivate Gatekeeper...). If you want to distribute to strangers, you may have a tougher time convincing them to deactivate their security to run your app though. Of course, even if the above wasn't true, this would still be a strawman. The vast majority of people capable of programming well enough to want to distribute their software are more than capable of putting together the 99 bucks needed to get a developer certificate. where do you get these numbers? You must be too young to remember actually having to buy Turbo C / Visual Studio / Metrowerks, but the parent post is absolutely correct - historically professional-grade developer tools have been quite expensive. It is only relatively recently that we have had the luxury of these tools being available for free. YOU are the one doing distortion field Seriously? And this advances the debate how?