kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Adam Wolf <adamwolf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi folks!

OS X has this thing called Gatekeeper.  Applications that are downloaded
off the internet fall under its "protection".  Systems have 3 settings for
Gatekeeper:

1) Only allow applications distributed through the Mac App Store
2) Mac Store + Developer signed applications
3) Let anything run

It is certainly beyond scope to distribute KiCad builds through the Mac App
Store in the near future.  It is not necessarily beyond scope for me to set
up package signing.  The main benefit we get is that users will no longer
have to right click on KiCad the first time they open it in order to run
the unsigned application, and our application appears a little more
professional.

Assuming the core team doesn't have philosophical objections to this, there
are some organizational aspects.

The application needs to be signed by a key we'd get from Apple.  There is
likely a $99/yr fee per *developer account* for this.  We already have one
at Wayne and Layne.  If we used ours to sign the KiCad builds, there would
likely be a place where you'd be able to see our name on the builds, but we
could probably get this going in a few days.

Alternatively, we could get another developer account just for KiCad.
Wayne and Layne can cover the yearly fee.  The application process was
actually kinda lengthy and involved some phone calls, but we can definitely
do it.

I haven't worked with this stuff intimately, actually, so the next step
might be to:

1) confirm with the core team that this might be reasonable
2) I look into it more

Thoughts?

Adam Wolf
Cofounder and Engineer
Wayne and Layne