The link is titled "Download Zen for macOS" which seems superfluous when the DMG starts downloading immediately, perhaps it needs a better title.
Also while I understand some people have moral objections to the 100 dollar/euro registration fee, clearly a lot more than that has been spent in time to get the application to this stage, almost all apps for macOS distributing like this are notarized now, and with such a slick marketing page it just feels weird to then not spend a relatively small amount of money to make this immediately far more accessible. The instructions aren't hard to follow, but still make trying it out 10-100x harder.
Also it's tricky to get donations for something that literally prevents people using the application, no one is going to donate for the registration fee before even trying it, and once they've gotten through the installation process there's no incentive to donate for that anymore.
To be fair, requiring the developer 100/eur per year in perpetuity to avoid a dialog literally telling the user to drag the app into the Trash feels a lot like extortion.
I don’t think anyone should pay Apple to notarize their applications to be honest. It’s basically extortion that you need both a running $99 subscription and a MacBook of some sort to complete the process. I understand why big companies will do so, but for OSS projects it frankly should cost anything. I do wonder if the process would stick if companies like Google and Microsoft refused to do it though they obviously won’t.
That being said, I’m sure a lot of OSS projects are willing to accept it if you personally chose to pay the fee.
At this point the browser isn't even beta on a single platform, I don't think making it easy to install on macOS is really a pressing priority to expect developers to drop money on in hopes of growth quite yet.
I’ll pay it when they just fully block software that doesn’t pay.
Until then as they escalate their extortion dialogs I’ll just normalize instructions on how to run dodgy looking shell scripts that bypass them on software I release for free.
If you are downloading a new browser app in 2024, it's a fair bet that you know how to get around MacOS' nanny state policies around un-notarized apps.
