The End of Free Software on Macs?
The End of Free Software on Macs? Long ago, when I was a junior professor at the University of Wisconsin, I wrote a simulator of the MIPS processor, named spim . Now, 30 years later, spim is still widely used in undergraduate computer architecture classes. I have maintained this software for three decades, porting it to new OS platforms and fixing the occasional bug, without asking for money. Not a big deal — that is what many people do with their academic and open-source software. I am done, however, supporting spim on Macs because of the changes that Apple has made to the Catalina version of MacOS. Starting Jan. 2020, software distributed outside of Apple's App Store must be "notarized" — i.e., signed by the software's developer. Nothing in particular wrong with signing software, but to go through Apple's signing process, you need an Apple Developer Account, which costs $100 per year. So, in other words, I need to pay a tax to Apple to distribute (...