Maybe
No (the app is written in C#, there's no way I'm dropping .NET dependency X.x)
Maybe
Will only come once the application is mature enough. I've already explained earlier that the application is still under active development and is updated regularly.
And, honestly, I don't know what era in you live to call this "a blast from the past", C# is as contemporary as it can get, and clickonce employment is also a recent technology.
Some very famous programs such as Github for Windows or Google Chrome use clickonce too...
Regarding your issue it's very likely due to your antivirus or firewall preventing the application from installing.
I don't have the money to afford a digital signature so this sometimes happens.
C#? Damn, sorry I wouldn't have even asked you to drop .NET if I knew. What a painful limitation ...
I mean a blast from the past in the sense where the whole setup is very proprietary, I don't easilly have access to the actual components of your application, and it isn't cross-platform at all (like all the .NET applications in the past). Everything is gated through an installer, one that downloads from the Internet even. It reminds me of the tools I'd use while trying to edit Diablo 2 files, because they'd require .NET and force me to use installers sometimes.
I highly doubt it's anything on my system stopping your installer (unless wine-1.9.21 has issues with it). I don't have an anti-virus, and I'm running Arch Linux using iptables as a firewall (which doesn't look like it should be filtering anything). I could mess around with installing different .NET versions using winetools (I have Mono), but the better option would be to try to make an archive work. I don't know much/anything that would be involved in having your installer use digital signatures, they should be free as they would be if you had a package on basically any flavour of Linux.
Ah well, thanks for the reply. I just wanted to put my $0.02 in against such proprietary practices as you severly limit non-Windows users from using your application.
And, honestly, I don't know what era in you live to call this "a blast from the past", C# is as contemporary as it can get, and clickonce employment is also a recent technology.
Some very famous programs such as Github for Windows or Google Chrome use clickonce too...
You're actually incorrect by stating clickonce is a recent technology though, having been released in 2003 I believe, but it doesn't really matter.
Most of the following could be moot if you're using C# as a RAD tool, as no really good ones exist at all IMO, so C# is as good an option as any (I'm actually currently developing a tiny cross-platform OpenGL UI kit, for stuff like that). I'm trying to speak mostly from the standpoint of using C# for actual development, and distribution.
I really feel deeply against these types of practices, and I'll try to explain to some degree why they even exist at all. I'd also like to point out the C# almost forces you to use proprietary practices (It was designed as a Windows programming language, in an era where cross-platform programming is on the rise), and doesn't really have any right to exist in modern programming. If you want as contemportary as you can get, try Golang.
Basically all of Windows uses pre-historic practices, Microsoft consistently pumps out one OS update after the next with no real groundbreaking changes. They're just now getting a repository of some sort for applications, and it's the Windows Store... So developers have attempted to make the Windows experience feel like basically everything else (Mac OSX, most flavours of Linux, BSDs) and have implemented their own repositories for applications, and distributed installers which more-or-less operate like crude package managers. This is what the clickone installer does. (Google has even taken that a step further and have Google Chrome self-updating. A huge security risk IMO, and certainly not a practice to look up to.). This isn't a good practice for users of wine as installers have a bad habit of being unpredictable.
In the modern day (2016), typically applications distribute the actual binaries of the program, as well as an installer option. This avoids a myriad of issues to do with putting the application into a repository (so not the installer) or running it on "other" systems. The installers are usually completely separate code with their own issues, it simply isn't reasonable to expect absolutely every user to be able conform to the installer's assumptions. WineHQ has many examples of applications running, but their installers do not.
Even further, most applications also distribute the source code (which I see you chose to require a formal request as per the GPL, which is another thing I haven't seen in a long time), further reducing security risk, and potential convenience pitfalls for advanced users.