Signing the distribution on Windows & Mac

[Andy Robinson]

Is there any interest in signing the distributions for Windows and Mac? 
It certainly seems to me that the current absence of signatures must be 
a significant obstacle to the adoption of GStreamer on these two 
platforms which between them account for the vast majority of all 
desktop computers.

At present on Windows 10 32-bit I download gstreamer-1.0-x86-1.8.1.msi 
and when I try to run it I get
    "The publisher could not be verified.
    Are you sure you want to run this software?".

On Mac OS 10.10 with default security settings I get
    "gstreamer-1.0-1.8.1-x86_64.pkg" can't be opened because
    it is from an unidentified developer.
    Your security preferences allow installation of only
    apps from the Mac App Store and identified developers.
The Mac doesn't allow the option of installing at all.

This will prevent many Windows users and practically all Mac users from 
installing it. I might be exaggerating slightly, but I would say that 
these days it is hardly worth producing Windows and Mac distributions at 
all if they are not signed.

Once the signing certificates are obtained then it's just one more step 
in the build script. I'm happy to help if I can though it seems to me 
the certificates should be owned and applied by the GStreamer 
organization, or by the person who builds the distribution packages. In 
particular I would be happy to pay the costs, which AFAIK would be 
something like $99 per year to be a member of the Apple Developer 
program and I currently pay around $400 per year for an authenticode 
certificate from Symantec, for Windows signing.

Obviously there is some self interest here on my part : the next release 
of my company's main product will not *require* GStreamer but I will be 
encouraging users to install it to add certain features (e.g. video, and 
more audio file formats).

Regards,
Andy Robinson, Seventh String Software, www.seventhstring.com