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by dceddia 186 days ago
The situation on Windows got remarkably better and cheaper recently-ish with the addition of Azure code signing. Instead of hundreds or thousands for a cert it’s $10/month, if you meet the requirements (I think the business must have existed for some number of years first, and some other things).

If you go this route I highly recommend this article, because navigating through Azure to actually set it up is like getting through a maze. https://melatonin.dev/blog/code-signing-on-windows-with-azur...
4 comments
jonathanlydall 186 days ago
Thanks for the link, I see only available to basically US, Canada and EU though.
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lwkl 185 days ago
That's not easier and cheaper than before. That's how it's always been only now you can buy the cert through Azure.

For an individual the Apple code signing process is a lot easier and more accessible since I couldn't buy a code signing certificate for Windows without being registered as a business.

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dceddia 185 days ago
> That's how it's always been only now you can buy the cert through Azure.

Where can you get an EV cert for $120/year? Last time I checked, all the places were more expensive and then you also had to deal with a hardware token.

Lest we talk past each other: it's true that it used to be sufficient to buy a non-EV cert for around the same money, where it didn't require a hardware token, and that was good enough... but they changed the rules in 2023.

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Razengan 186 days ago
> it’s $10/month

So $120 a year but no it's only Apple with a "tAx"

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TimeBearingDown 186 days ago
Millions of Windows power users are accustomed to bypassing SmartScreen.

A macOS app distributed without a trusted signature will reach a far smaller audience, even of the proportionately smaller macOS user base, and that's largely due to deliberate design decisions by Apple in recent releases.

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feznyng 185 days ago
As you said, you need to have a proper legal entity for about 2 years before this becomes an option.

My low-stakes conspiracy theory is that MS is deliberately making this process awful to encourage submission of apps to the Microsoft Store since you only have to pay a one-time $100 fee there for code-signing. The downside is of course that you can only distribute via the MS store.

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