I’m just a user for whom “building” is too much of a burden. When this was posted, I went to the website to see if I could download the standalone desktop version for Windows. Since I knew that the lack of this was something I had experienced and commented on in the past, I was able to find the issue and see how it was (poorly, IMO) handled. Someone else may have just given up. How many users (not programmers) would even bother to go to GitHub to hunt for binaries for Windows or macOS? The Windows binaries seem to be on GitHub but there is no link on the site’s marketing page. It seems very shortsighted to not provide the links on the main site.
I also don’t think it’s entitlement to give feedback on open source projects, which typically have better feedback mechanisms and acceptance from external sources than from commercial vendors. It seems obvious now that Mattermost has other priorities and doesn’t know how and when to close tickets.
We published to the App Stores to see if that would lower the barrier to adoption. We learned that that while they are convenient for most folks, some can't access them, in particular the Windows Store, due to firewalls, corp policy, etc. So far, this seems to be a bigger problem for Windows than Mac in general.
To be transparent, we want to automate all the App Store publishing. It is currently a semi-manual process. It turns out that the Microsoft Store process is easiest (mostly uploading an MSIX file, which they sign for you). Signing for the Mac App Store was brittle for us, and became more manual. Notarizing for standalone builds has additional steps on top of that. Hopefully, Xcode Cloud will eventually solve all these problems.
BTW, another easier way to build might be to fork and use the GitHub actions:
GP here. This is a late reply. As a user who cannot go through build processes and prefers direct downloads, I’d still like to see direct download links on the main site’s pages for the Windows and macOS versions (in addition to the app store links).
I also don’t think it’s entitlement to give feedback on open source projects, which typically have better feedback mechanisms and acceptance from external sources than from commercial vendors. It seems obvious now that Mattermost has other priorities and doesn’t know how and when to close tickets.