it's per publisher, company accounts can have multiple developers, a bit misleading there, and it's not even needed for mac apps, just for publishing and distributing notarized apps or through the app store

Apple has made opening non-notarized apps a huge pain.

First, it was a setting in system preferences to allow unsigned apps.

Then, that option was removed and it was the a are-you-sure-you-want-to-open-this dialog on every first run of a new or updated app.

Then the "Open" button on the dialog was removed and put in the Security preferences pane.

When System Preferences became System Settings a couple releases ago, that button got moved below the fold in the Privacy and Security prefpane. This is the current state today and is infuriating for some OSS apps, especially niche ones.

At one point, there was a command-line way to clear the xattr 'com.apple.quarantine' on the .app, but that also got nuked in a recent update.

I've always just used the right-click-Open approach. Does that not still work?

It does still work, yes.

But people still want to believe macOS will not become locked down like iOS. It is quite funny. The only reason it has not yet been done is because it is technically hard to do so on a platform that wasn't built that way from the get-go.