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Comment by tiborsaas | Hacker News Reader

It costs money

Jitsi Meet is already on the iOS App Store. That would mean they already have an Apple developer account with which they could sign the Electron app.

Isn't Jitsi co-developed/sponsored by 8x8? An Apple developer account costs 99 per year. If the money is a problem, a lot of people would probably donate some amount if that helps getting signed releases.

At any rate, I think having unsigned binaries that are not notarized introduces additional hoops for non-expert users, since macOS requires signed bundles by default (which is a good thing!).

Isn't the hoop just right-click and choose open? Or is there something more nowadays?

in some cases, it can't be installed at all depending on the privileges.

If by "hoop" you mean "workaround," yes. But normies are used to starting applications by double-left-clicking them, and there's nothing in the error message that appears after that indicating it can be worked around. Unless the normie thinks to ask a friend or the internet how they can go ahead and open the app anyway, they'll never find out about it.

To come at it from another direction, why is it your users' responsibility to work around your own cheapness/laziness? Just front the $100 and sign your damn app, especially if you're making money with it.

As Cyberdog says, the hoop is that a lot of regular users do not know about.

Moreover, signatures and notarization are there for a reason. Code signing makes it more likely that the bundle was not tampered with. Apple can revoke the certificate if the developer key leaked. Notarization will catch at least some forms of malware.

I refuse to run unsigned code (with one exception), because it decreases security significantly. There have also been severe incidents in the past with unsigned code, e.g.:

https://blog.malwarebytes.com/threat-analysis/mac-threat-ana...

We can help here. We'll do it free. Jitsi guys: Email me dave[at]todesktop.com.

Not sure I understand your offerings. You seem to suggest that you offer code signing without an Apple Developer subscription? So are you using your own certificates to sign your clients’ code? If that’s the case it sounds like you’re probably breaking TOS and opening up your clients to immense risk: one client’s abuse results in all clients’ apps revoked.

edit: nvm

Unless free actually means a cash allowance (which would be very generous), I don’t see how this would work. I’m certainly not gonna let someone else register and pay for an Apple Developer account on my behalf.

Our customers provide the certs. We can sort something out for Jitsi though. They are on the app store so they most likely already have a cert.

Okay, that’s more reasonable.

This is just one of my guess here. If you look at the commit history the project doesn't look like being the main focus. Code signing is not as streamlined as Let's encrypt, the money part makes it bumpy, so I'm not surprised.

It costs $100 a year to sign Apple programs (last time I was doing it). Jitsi has a corporate sponsor. Nobody involved with Jitsi could swing it? Really?

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