[stblack]

Nobody has yet mentioned how certificates induce and support churn.

In 2025 it's not possible to create an app and release it into the world and have it work for years or decades, as was once the case.

If your "developer certificate" for app stores and ad-hoc distribution is valid for a year, then every year you must pay a "developer program fee" to remain a participant. You need to renew that cert, and you need to recompile a new version within a year. Which means you must maintain a development environment and tools on an ongoing basis for an app that may be feature- and operationally-complete.

All this is completely unnecessary except when it comes to reinforcing hegemony of app-store monopolists.

[xg15]

Yeah, we went from "software is a good that can be duplicated with no cost" to "software can be a service" to "software must be a service".

[dns_snek]

But that has nothing to do with certificates as such and everything to do with app store policies. Certificates don't induce churn - app stores do.

[Loudergood]

Yup, I bought and paid for a simple Android game that my kids could play together while we were waiting for thing.

New phone and suddenly I can't install it from Google Play anymore simply because the developer hasn't updated it in awhile. Not that it needs to be updated. I've since repurchased it from itch.io and it runs fine, but that's not unusual for lots of good old software.

[supertrope]

A $100 fee makes it costly to burn and churn new accounts. So it's a spam filter.

Forcing developers to stay engages pushes out feature complete software but also pushes out unmaintained software.

An app store is an inherently higher cost distribution method. The operating systems are gratis so development is cross subsidized from app store royalties. They have an incentive to host more paid apps, especially micro-transaction apps that trick kids into spending thousands of dollars off mom's credit card. Of course they've banned or are going to ban alternative channels so you can't choose to self-distribute.