Re: Is developing extensions for Safari free?

From https://developer.apple.com/support/transition/

Teams in the Safari Developer Program

The development resources available in the Safari Developer Program are now part of the new single Apple Developer Program. Your existing Safari Developer Program membership will remain active until July 8, 2015 and your Safari extensions will continue to work for existing users. Your extensions will also remain available for download on the existing Safari Extensions Gallery until the fall.

In early fall, the new Safari Extensions Gallery for OS X El Capitan will go live. This gallery will be the safest and most reliable place for users to download Safari Extensions, as all extensions will be signed and hosted by Apple to ensure that they are safe to install. All updates to your existing extensions, must be submitted to the new gallery.

Why does the Safari page still say that it's free?  Probably an oversight.

Because it used to be a separate, free program, but on June 8th all of the Developer programs got restructured.

I had the same question as I got the email that my safari developer membership was about to expire.

From what I gather, the short answer: was free, is no longer as of July 8th.

Im sure this will help the already lacking library of safari extensions flourish even more.

I contacted Apple Developer Support with a proposal that free extensions should be free to develop.

I just wanted to create a simple browser extension for Safari, one button. And when I found out that I need to pay $99 to develop a freaking button for Safari, for Apple, for FREE, on which I won't make any money... I realized that someone at Apple has to be delusional and does not want Apple to grow or help Safari at all.

Who ever is in charge of this, allow making Safari Extensions a free thing.

They definitely shouldn't include Safari Extensions in the Apple Developer Program due to the fee.  Developing extensions, and certificates to do so, should be free.  Otherwise, we may not see many Safari extensions available, that would be otherwise

That's simply ridiculous, as many here have stated already. Paying $99 a year to develop free Browser Extensions is outrageous - and even worse, it puts Apple far behind to like Google, for who's Google Chrome you can develop extensions without paying Google.

Hope they are going to overthink this strategy! I wouldn't be surprised if we see more and more Safari Extensions gone in the near future because of this.

...and all I wanted is update an extension I built some years ago for our company's internal use

I'm not going to bother with it:

$ rm -rf ~/projects/*.safariextension

To clarify things a bit for me: it's not only impossible to publish my extension in Apple's gallery without paying $99, but it's also impossible to develop an extension (or change another extension) for my sole use for free? Am I right?

This sounds like typical Apple behavior. They are not interested in making and supporting interesting software, just about making money and locking down their app store / Safari extension gallery. This is why I made the decision a few years ago to stop making iOS apps and just do web development instead. I would try not to waste any effort dealing with Apple, it's nothing but frustration. The best option is to distance yourself from their malicious software whenever possible.

Greedy, greedy bastards. It is one thing to develop a free extension for the community, donating your time and effort to help other people. But pay $99 each year to Apple on top of this? Greedy, greedy bastards.

It's the only thing stopping me from using safari. What I want is building a extesion for myself, and don't want to publish. But the policy says, You need to pay $99 a year to use a extension written by myself, how ridiculous!