alt Hacker NewsTo build gtk you are hit with GPL which sucks. To build Swift you have to pay developer fee to Apple, to build win32 you have to pay developer fee to Microsoft. Which both suck. Don’t forget mobile Android you pay to Google.
That is why everyone jumped to building in Electron because it is based on web standards that are free and are running on chromium which kind of is tied to Google but you are not tied to Google and don’t have to pay them a fee. You can also easily provide kind of the same experience on mobile skipping Android shenigans.
Replies
> To build gtk you are hit with GPL which sucks.
It's LGPL, all you have to do is link GTK dynamically instead of statically to comply.
> to build win32 you have to pay developer fee to Microsoft.
You don't.
>"to build win32 you have to pay developer fee to Microsoft"
Not really, you can self sign but your native application will be met with a system prompt trying to scare user away. This is maddening of course and I wish MS, Apple, whatever others will die just for this thing alone. You fuckers leveraged huge support from developers writing to you platform but not, it is of course not enough for you vultures, now let's rip money from the hands that fed you.
I know Anthropic is burning cash but I'm pretty sure they can afford to pay the developer fees for those platforms.