It has everything to do with it. We don't necessarily disagree about what we think Apple should do. My argument here is that I care about the GPL being respected, which forces me to respect the fundamental principle of distributing code with coercive license terms, whether or not the coercion involves money. If Apple doesn't want to give their intellectual property away for free, they shouldn't be required to, even if it doing so is often the norm. Even if Apple had followed that norm in some other contexts in the past.

If we were discussing desktop operating systems, this is the moment where I would advocate switching to a properly Free Software (or near-Free) software ecosystem. Unfortunately there's nothing for me to advocate when it comes to smartphones; there aren't any serious recommendations to make which aren't catastrophically impractical for all but the most obsessive Richard Stallman acolyte.

In my view, they are making alternative app stores way more attractive to FLOSS apps, because they will incur no fees from Apple, and the creators won't have to set up an NPO.

Edit: Seems I misunderstood, I just re-read the relevant section:

>iOS apps distributed from the App Store and/or an alternative app marketplace will pay €0.50 for each first annual install per year over a 1 million threshold.

The fact that they are charging money for apps installed from non-App Store sources is ludicrous to me, if they aren't running the store, then they don't get to collect fees on it, imo.

I’d agree, but the developer in this example could still use the iOS App Store for free using the current terms

That’s why it’s opt in, you’re being informed upfront there will be installation fees.