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VLC - App stores were a mistake
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this post was submitted on 24 Mar 2024
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Privacy
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You can pay a one time fee if $25 to get Microsoft to sign your app on the Microsoft store, or you can pay $400+ per year to buy your own certificate. So Microsoft Store is sadly the cheap way to release apps on Windows. (Without users getting scary warnings from Windows and AV about installing unsigned aoftware)
Right. My memory is a bit hazy (I don't use the store). What I was trying to address was the revenue funnel they built around the environment. MS still gets a cut of the $400 certs, right?
The UX of the scary warning is to make the user feel safe installing signed software in comparison, but there is no guarantee that a signed app does not contain an exploit. It's an abuse of people's misunderstandings of security, for profit and user share.
Maybe I should have worked through my thoughts a little more before posting, but hopefully this clarifies my sentiment. And like I said, I don't use the store at all, so if I still have some inaccuracies then I welcome corrections.
The certs are sold by certificate authority companies, and Microsoft doesn't get a share of that, though I'm not sure.
Yeah, software being signed says nothing about it not being malicious or insecure, but it does prove the author is what it says, and if it is malicious then the responsible party is clearly visible.
For non-commercial hobby/open-source software the certificate price is prohibitive, so the only 2 options are Microsoft Store or accepting that users will see the scary warnings, and of course complain to the developer about it.
The assumption is that legitimate companies who sell software will sign it and that signature proves it came from that company who you trust because of their publicly known legitimacy. It's a bit of circular reasoning. But it does round back towards that legitimacy - if it is found that they violate your trust, they lose public trust and thus lose sales.
Luckily new OSes (cough NOT WINDOWS) are able to sandbox applications and prevent them from accessing resources without declaring the need to access it.
And as for the signing certificate, I think the MS Store will allow any signed app. They just offer the cheaper signing service.