My users and I both already paid an eyewatering price to get our Macs. Why should I have to pay to distribute my non malware app, which might even be free and open source, because my users want to defend against other people's malware?

Why is Apple blackmailing the industry over malware protection instead of making it a core part of the OS experience? I'd rather have malware protection than losing my Esc key or redoing the app window background textures yet again.