Yeah testflight distribution is a decent workaround, but the limit the number of installs. Also you have to pay Apple for the ability to distribute through testflight.
I want a way for a 16 year old kid to make an awesome app and then distribute it to whoever wants it. Like back in the shareware days.
like, the App Store? Is it just the $99/yr that you object to? Because you could offer some scholarships to promising programmers. The kid already has a Mac, I bet he can talk his parents into a developer account if he's made an awesome app.
FWIW, I have a few ssh clients on my iPhone (Termius, Prompt, iTerminal) that came from the App Store. Termius even offers mosh. Why wouldn't they be approved?
I know of a lot of apps that are attached to having an active patreon sub (via testflight downloads).
The only thing I can think of that would be a problem for that 16 year old kid (or alternatively, a sneaky black hat) is permissions. Maybe a color coded permissions model where green means can only access the most basic systems, yellow means could access some personal data, red being can access very important or practically all your data, you must trust them implicitly before installing.
I want a way for a 16 year old kid to make an awesome app and then distribute it to whoever wants it. Like back in the shareware days.