Yet you do have a desire for it to run on Apple's hardware, under Apple's OS. And thus you have a desire to do business with them. That you disagree with their rules for doing business by itself doesn't make them the bad guy.
They're offering many of the same terms offered by Microsoft, Google (Android Play store and Stadia), and Sony after all.
But, as I pointed out in a sibling reply, this hardware, firmware, and OS is, practically speaking, not ours. No matter how much as we’d like it to be.
This is a problem that's bigger than Apple, and it's not a problem that will be solved by allowing more stores on the phone - it won't make it somehow "your" hardware.
You can blame Apple for doing this with their phone all you want, but you're fighting against the tide with a shovel. It's an industry standard to lock hardware down to the point where they'd rather the hardware be bricked (the Nintendo Switch and its hardware fuses) than run "libre" software on it.