Thanks for opening this, I'll have a look into it as soon as I find some time.

Buildings is not really an issue as we can make use of github-actions to do it. The issue is around costs involved in maintaining a developer certificate, which for small projects an be more than the total amount of donations they receive.

I wonder if there is an open-source organization that could provide a free signing service for open source projects, so they do not have to hassle with that. I suspect that would be quite a popular service but raises a two more questions:

• Does Apple allows someone to sign certificates for software that is not your own? (publishing on AppStore is out of question for open-source GPL for other reasons)
• If Apple cancels the certificate of the helping-organization, it may impact lots of users.

You are right, automatic build must be somehow an option even with signed packages. We currently build all our packages on TravisCI, the MacOS package too so we could add it there.

I'm not sure about that organization, I haven't heard about any but it would have to check all the supported projects for any malware and other non complying code, otherwise it would lead to Apple canceling the Account and with it all supported projects.

I'll check out on the Qt forum if someone has experience with signing Qt applications for MacOS, if yes and the only thing we need is the Account, I'm might go for the developer account, hopefully the donations will keep up.

A MacOS is might still be useful for supporting MacOS users, currently all work is done a VM which is Buggy at its best.

I've got feedback on the Qt Forum, looks like we just need the Apple Developer Account and macdeployqt which we already use. I'll give it a try in next couple of days and might ping you guys for testing.

Got the Apple Developer Account, looking now into signing the package...

After randomly changing characters in the build script, at least that's what it felt building only via the CI, I think I've got it working, at least I got an email from Apple telling me that my App was notarized. Can someone check the latest continuous build and see if it's working? And while at it, you could also check if this is fixed #401, the version should be 1.8.1 of course. @connorads @ssbarnea

Looks like it's working in 1.8.1 🚀

Did you have to pay for your Apple Developer Account in the end @DamirPorobic?

Nice, glad to hear it's finally working.

Yes I did have to pay, there is no support for FOSS in the world of Apple. The options for not profitable organizations didn't apply to us according to Apple Support, I think it's more for real organizations, we are just some dudes pushing code to GitHub :D