Will SafariDriver be affected by upcoming changes from Apple?

[David]

See attached notice from Apple to Safari extensions developers (who have extensions in the existing Safari Extensions Gallery, not sure about those who don't submit/publish anything to the public).

Apple is merging the Safari developer program into the Apple developer program, so all Apple related development is one program/account and it costs the same old $99/yr.

I assume these plans mean the existing free Safari developer accounts will be no good soon and one can't generate the security certificates without the paid Apple developer account, even for Safari extensions. And existing certificates will expire within a year or two.

How I see this might affect SafariDriver:

* Selenium team will need to use Apple developer account for certificates to compile the SafariDriver extension to bundle with the releases, after the currently used certificate(s) expire.

* Users who wish to compile a version of SafariDriver themselves now actually need an Apple developer account. No more freebies (unless user already has an account for iOS automation stuff). I forget, they might not need it if they load the extension source files locally (or they might still) but they definitely need it if they want to create a *.safariextz file to deploy anywhere.