I think if you are locked out from doing what you want on your phone that you bought through arbitrary software locks then you should have the right to bypass that. This isn’t costing the app developer anything, nor were they even using the app to generate the pass, so I don’t really see any issue here

It's taking advantage of another developer's $99 payment. I just took a look at one of these apps and the in-app purchase to remove ads is $1.99. I think if I did this I'd throw that developer the 2 bucks.

Sort of like when you bum a ride from someone, even though it's not costing them anything, it's good form to offer to split the cost of gasoline.

It would be nice to do that but I don’t think this is some horribly immoral thing either

Look I’ll generate and give you a certificate for free if you want one.

I'd pay Apple $99 before I asked another developer to do that for me, probably putting their agreement with Apple at risk.

Taking a principled stance against Apple is fine. I'm totally onboard with that. I only think it's uncool to take that stance and then use another developer's cert without their permission. Even though it's unlikely, it can only harm that other developer.

Based on all the downvotes HN seems to disagree, but I don't see what's so unreasonable about my position.

On the contrary, this kind of hack is /incredibly/ cool. Finding ways around arbitrary restrictions? Writing a bash script that generates barcodes? Beautiful.