I found this summary of Notarization and upcoming deadlines useful. It’s from 
arstechnica.com.

App notarization is more onerous, both for users and for developers. This 
feature was introduced as an optional extra step in Mojave. Going all the way 
back to Mountain Lion, Mac developers offering apps outside of the Mac App 
Store could use their Apple-issued developer certificate to tell macOS that 
their app was from a registered Apple developer. In exchange, the app would run 
with minimal interference from Gatekeeper, the then-new feature that promised 
to keep Mac users safe from malware. Apps that didn’t use Developer ID could 
run, but you’d either need to turn Gatekeeper off or right-click the app and 
open it again to allow an exception.

The notarization process is a bit more involved. It requires developers who 
want to distribute outside the Mac App Store to submit apps to Apple for review 
by its Notary Service—this isn’t the same as the actual content review process 
used to allow apps into the Mac App Store but a shorter and more automated 
process that should only take a few minutes. The Notary Service checks to see 
whether the app contains malware; whether it uses the enhanced System Integrity 
Protection runtime from Mojave that protects running apps from being tampered 
with; and whether the apps and all their components are properly signed in the 
first place.

Notarization, like Developer ID, isn’t strictly necessary—non-notarized apps 
will still run on macOS, one crucial point on which macOS continues to differ 
from iOS and iPadOS. But to run (at least the first time) without triggering 
Gatekeeper and scary security warnings, all apps running on Catalina must be 
notarized. And starting in January of 2020, apps will need to meet new 
Catalina-specific notarization requirements (these were originally supposed to 
go into effect when the operating system was released, but Apple relaxed them 
just a bit to give devs more time). This Electric Light Company post on 
notarization covers the requirements and the difference between Mojave and 
Catalina in more detail.

The URL for this article:
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/10/macos-10-15-catalina-the-ars-technica-review/#h61

The text also contains two links:
Developer ID : https://developer.apple.com/developer-id/
“starting in January of 2020” : https://developer.apple.com/news/?id=09032019a
“Electric Light Company post on notarization”: 
https://eclecticlight.co/2019/06/07/notarization-in-mojave-and-catalina/

The last of these looks the most interesting, and suggests the thing that I was 
afraid of: a “hardened” environment in which it could be illegal to generate 
code and then jump to it. I haven’t read that post carefully yet and it’s 
somewhat above my pay grade anyway, but I’m definitely concerned.

John

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