Little Snitch seems to have prepared for this.

https://blog.obdev.at/little-snitch-and-possible-deprecation...

That was before the WWDC 2019 announcement that all kexts are now deprecated and will be disabled soon. The Little Snitch team has been quiet about this.

Panic got some special exemptions to be in the Mac App Store previously, but they are not allowed to talk about it in detail. Perhaps LS is going a similar route and it will be revealed when Apple releases the next version of macOS.

How do people feel about Apple making these kinds of deals with Panic and others?

As a registered developer, there's a clear path to reach out to Apple and make my case, but that doesn't guarantee I can use the MAS. A lot of devs don't see a need for it though, because the Mac userbase, in general, knows how to get apps on the www.

As long as I can distribute outside, I'm okay with it. But I, and even the biggest Apple fans in the press, have acknowledged the walls closing in.

That's about a different deprecation back in 2018(?). Note this bit:

>But what happens if Apple will not or cannot provide the required features? NKEs will be deprecated, but not Kernel Extensions in general. We can still implement a Kernel Extension to augment the functionality of the NE framework.

The developers of outbound firewall like Little Snitch, TripMode and RadioSilence have already voiced concerns how the alternative offered doesn't have the requisite feature capability required for their software and would actually cripple it. Apple has asked them to file "enhancement requests" with no guarantee that it will be implemented - https://forums.developer.apple.com/thread/79590 .