This issue was due to Apple's system for checking for expired developer certificates and for malware. Their OCSP server failed, among other things, which is why some apps couldn't launch.
I use mostly free/open source software for web development on macOS; the outage didn't affect me at all.
Your anecdotal survivorship story was, indeed, rather unhelpful when I had previously linked news articles discussing the widespread loss of productivity associated with this concern.
I use mostly free/open source software for web development on macOS; the outage didn't affect me at all.
Details on what happened: https://eclecticlight.co/2020/11/16/checks-on-executable-cod...