The new business terms including the Core Technology Fee are only required for developers who will want to be able to upload their apps to alternative app stores like f-droid:

https://developer.apple.com/support/dma-and-apps-in-the-eu/#...

Pretty clear malicious compliance. "Oh, you want to be able to distribute your popular free apps on other app stores? You gotta start paying us massively then."

I wonder how they should comply with the law in your eyes. What is a fair way for Apple to recoup the investment they make into their developer programs?

Selling devices and App Store revenue. To charge free/open-source apps for your OS is absurd.

Apples has several revenue streams:

- They sell hardware and licensed software to consumers. Within the law they may ask for money for feature updates.

- They also charge developers for access to their tools and access to their store front and payment handling.

That's all legit and if they want to hike prices or put parts of that information behind paywalls, the market will sort it out.

But if a consumer and a third party developer want to do business without all that, then it's my (and the DMAs) stance that apple has no right to a share of that. They EU is increasingly of the opinion that, in general, a device has to serve its owner and not the original manufacturer.

When they want to protect consumers by scanning for known malware that's fine but "Apple loses revenue" is not a threat at all.

Selling phones? How does msft recoup the resources theyve put into windows developer programs?

Oh, that's sneaky. So if someone wants to also distribute their app on something else, they pay the fee on their existing installs?

Or take advantage of some of the new capabilities, such as NFC access or alternative browser engines.