On: Mountain Lion: John Gruber's personal briefing

[Johngibb]

They're letting developers use a free Apple ID to sign apps. You only need to pay if you're distributing through the Mac App Store.

[mike-cardwell → Johngibb]

Yes, but my point was in the future, once apps must be signed, it is not unreasonable to imagine them introducing a fee, with the excuse that they need to do this to introduce more barriers for malware authors.