Ask HN: Is it still conceivable to remain an anonymous developer nowadays?
by synappser on Hacker News.
HN has been my morning coffee favourite read for years now but it’s my very first post. I’m an old man, so please bare with me. I am a seasoned systems architect and developer, now retired. While I was tempted in the first few weeks of my retirement to just turn the page and let it go, I remembered how much I used to enjoy writing small utilities for my own daily workflows. A year ago, I asked my fellow forum members (a Mac-dedicated one) if they would like to beta test some of my applications (and oh, they did). I got high quality feedback I would not have gotten elsewhere. I kept striving to answer their feature requests and today many of my first beta testers are insisting that my applications have outgrown the private beta. I was caught completely off guard by FinderFix (https://ift.tt/uiyjqWB), the first application I’m opening to public beta, making the top row on Reddit a couple of weeks ago. This sudden limelight is both an opportunity and a challenge. I am not complaining. Any publicity is good publicity and I got this kind of genuine enthusiastic feedback: “OH MY GOD! Bro you’re a god sent. Thanks man I love this app. Also that Cmd + X for cut/paste. Oof so good!”. I however cherish anonymity and I laud the Internet for allowing me to enforce it. I am thus publishing my software under a pseudonym (a pen name, if you prefer) with a free Apple Developer Certificate. How long will I be able, with Apple’s current Gatekeeper policy, to preserve my anonymity if I were to turn this hobby into a real business, albeit a small one? For more context, please refer to a couple posts of mine (a manifesto of my core ethos): https://ift.tt/K7MzfL8 I guess this is a tough question to answer, unless you’re an Apple insider, but I’d really appreciate any guidance you could give me. Thank you