> Ahhh so you want the public to do your QA for you and don’t mind interfering with their productivity when the first iterations of your software are a buggy mess?
"Open source" means developed by the public. The public isn't just doing the QA, they're doing the entire thing from the first line of code. Which is exactly the problem with Apple's interference -- they want you to have a finished app before you can share it with all the people who might have been willing to help you build it.
> TestFlight
And we're back to intentionally putting up barriers to exactly what open source needs to succeed.
Maybe 1% of users are programmers, and 1% of those might be contributors. But that's fine if you have a million users -- less than 0.1% of the world population -- because you could have a hundred contributors, which is enough to get something done. Which in turn allows you to improve and then get ten million users etc.
Testflight caps the number of users at 10,000. Now you've got 1 contributor instead of 100 and when that's not enough you're sunk. Meanwhile the "beta" is forced to expire after 90 days which creates friction for the users and makes them more likely to abandon you.
> Your open source devs are not always great at disclosing the fact that their software is half baked
People will figure this out pretty quickly when they try to use it. But then that's the point -- you try to use it, it sucks, but you can fix it yourself. The intention is to have this happen and then the app improves for everyone.