Cannot launch on Big Sur 11.1

[theaswanson]

I downloaded release 3.0, but I cannot open it on Big Sur (11.1). When launching, I get the following error:

"BibleTime" cannot be opened because the developer cannot be verified. macOS cannot verify that this app is free from malware.

[gholmlund]

I have not yet upgraded to Big Sur. I probably will shortly.

The immediate problem you are showing is described in this link. https://github.com/bibletime/bibletime/issues/290 For a possible work around read the part titled "How to open an app that hasn't been notarized or is from an unidentified developer".

BibleTime for MacOs was built using Qt 5.13.2. Looking at the Qt/Big Sur bugs I listed a sample of them below.

https://bugreports.qt.io/browse/QTBUG-85546 https://bugreports.qt.io/browse/QTBUG-89816 https://bugreports.qt.io/browse/QTBUG-85940 https://bugreports.qt.io/browse/QTBUG-88495 https://bugreports.qt.io/browse/QTBUG-86358 https://bugreports.qt.io/browse/QTBUG-89287

Conclusions:

Qt 5.13.2 may not run on Big Sur

Upgrading to Qt 5.15.2 may make it run. If it does run there seem to be numerous visual issues.

It is probable that a well running version of BibleTime on MacOs will require a Qt version greater than 6.0.0 (the current latest version).

BibleTime won't build with Qt 6.0.0 and will require some ugly conditional coding to work with Qt 6.

I will keep looking at this but it does not look like there is a quick fix.

[jaakristioja]

As far as I know this verification thing is just a piece of the puzzle which helps them dictate what apps are allowed on the platform (and track app usage).

I suggest to move away from Apple products. Given their recent conduct (especially at the beginning of this year wrt app censorship) I think we should make OS X support less of a it a priority for BibleTime.

Personally, the more I think of it, I would just want to drop support for OS X.

[gholmlund]

Apple is starting to require apps that do not appear in the store, to be notarized. This involves senting the app to Apple and getting the notarizarion from them. And for the privilege of doing this you pay $99/year. I am having thoughts of not supporting MacOs also.

[Theophilaeus]

Hi Jack and Gary, Although relatively new to BibleTime on MacOS (and especially Big Sur), I have used it for a few years on W..d.ws and several "flavours" of Linux, (Ubuntu/Kubuntu, Mandriva and more recently Mint (from version 17.2 to the current version, 20.1) and more lately, MacOS.

I cannot say how much I appreciate your huge amount of work, managing BibleTime's development and its ongoing development. I am looking to enter Bible College, hopefully later this year and would be immensely disappointed not to have such an invaluable "resource library" available on my MacBook Air M1 - and certainly, I would not be the only one.

Yes, it is frustrating how Apple put these obstacles in the way, but, given. the way that Facebook, Google and others are also censoring and threatening to silence traditional Christian views across the Internet and social media, isn't is all the more important to keep developing BibleTime, across many platforms? After all, God's word has endured 2000+ years, and many, many forms of attempted censorship!

Please, will you reconsider?

[jaakristioja]

As a workaround, although not a very comfortable one, I guess one could still run Linux with BibleTime in a Virtual Machine on Big Sur.

[jaakristioja]

Btw, have you tried the following? https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/open-a-mac-app-from-an-unidentified-developer-mh40616/mac

Note however, that this guide does indeed instruct to override some security features Apple has now put in place. These features are in principle designed to make things more secure, and I believe they work as advertised. However, this added security requires certain cooperation between Apple and app developers, where Apple is in a dominant position it could potentially abuse.

I do not want to enter into a contract with Apple to make BibleTime binaries automatically "trusted" by their OS, even if it cost us no money.

If you can override this security feature, you might still be able to run BibleTime which you downloaded from an untrusted third party (github.com). Since we do not cryptographically sign these binaries, you don't currently have any means to verify their integrity. Even if we did sign them, you would still first have to establish trust in the keys we use for signing etc.

PS: However, there are bigger security issues with BibleTime (Sword), and just in case this should become relevant, I'm citing and emphasizing the following text from our source code:

WARNING: Installing or updating works uses the internet. If you live in a persecuted country you may not want to do this.

[ioxo]

BibleTime works perfectly on Big Sur.

If you download dmg file via some browser like Safari, Firefox etc you need to delete com.apple.quarantine attribute from dmg file (or .app folder). To do that you need little bit terminal experience or start learn it ;).

Tiny tutorial to getting it work: Open your Teminal.app / start program Terminal.app. If you opened BibleTime.dmg file and moved program to Application folder then you have to write following commands:

cd /Applications xattr -d com.apple.quarantine BibleTime.app

xattr command delete the com.apple.quarantine attribute which eliminate to start program normally. This is normal for every program which has not Apple's quarantine and downloaded some "untrusted site"

And then you can close Teminal.app cmd+q.

If you not like to play with xattr - command you can download BibleTime via curl. To do so that skip the com.apple.quarantine attribute and your program start normally without issue. To download via curl you need (again) open Terminal and write following:

curl -OL https://github.com/bibletime/bibletime/releases/download/v3.0/BibleTime-3.0.dmg

(-O switch tell curl download to file named BibleTime-3.0.dmg and -L is follow redirects)

In my opinion that bug tag can be removed or mark as solved because I don't see any bug here for that issue reason. (It is not even bug if you don't wan't to pay someone to agree download or it is bug on the whole operating system)

I hope you understand my guides my English is not so good but hope you get the point and find more help on internet if guides not help enough.