[johnnyanmac]

>you create a device, and all the dev tools around it, should a government be able to force you to give it away and support people using it for free?

they aren't using it for free, though. These are $1000+ luxury hardware powered by software that developer pay a yearly license to develop for (and because Apple has no modern server OS, these devs also buy into said $1000+ hardware).

At this point I see it as rent-seeking since essentially they are saying that companies need to retroactively pay for software they made decades ago, even if they want to bypass it.

>in the end Apple can say "hey we are selling the dev kit for $500k, only good for this major version of the OS" and that will be the end of that.

that would honestly be a better deal. $500k for a dev kit for a large gaming company would pay for itself if it can make $2m+ or so in revenue (after advertising budgets). It would be catastropic for indies but indies aren't likely to see alternate stores as is.