macOS app signing and homebrew

[theacodes]

Quite a few issues have popped up about app signing and adding feishin to homebrew (#104, #1725, #37, #818), and all have been closed with the short and reasonable explanation that Feishin is not signed due to the cost associated with the Apple developer account.

I wanted to ask if the developers are forgoing signing due to being opposed on ideological grounds or because of insufficient funding to pay for the yearly developer fee.

If it's ideological, cool, it'd be nice to have confirmation. If it's funding, also cool, I would be willing to sponsor the developer fee for the first two years.

Thank you for this excellent app! :)

[jeffvli]

The reason is not ideological, I have nothing against Apple or macOS.

It's 100% related to the cost, as it did not make sense for me to be paying a yearly subscription fee for app signing on:

1. What I assumed at the time to be the smallest userbase (and confirmed via analytics)
2. Something that can be relatively easily worked around by the user, although it does break features like automatic updates
3. Signing for only 1 operating system - Windows would have to use a different cert although not having one doesn't break functionality like it does on macOS

It's very generous of you to offer to sponsor the fee for the first two years, and I'm super appreciative of that!
That being said, another significant issue is that I don't own any macOS devices, which would make it difficult for me to actually generate/export the cert required for the signing.

I'm going to leave the app as-is for the time being, but will let you know if/when I'm able to accomodate for this.

[theacodes]

Thank you for responding!

That sounds totally reasonable. If you end up obtaining a mac or another contributor with one joins, feel free to ping me.

I would offer to handle the mac distribution part myself, but unfortunately, I have much less time than money.