> So the solution is to let another big tech be the gatekeeper?
No, the solution is explicitly stopping big tech from being a gatekeeper. Apple can continue to sell their "premium" App Store with amazing security benefits and brilliant moderation, while advanced users can toggle the "freedom mode" setting or whatever and go get IPA files off Github. It's not some pie-in-the-sky concept, it's how software distribution was meant to be done.
> I don’t have the expertise to look through the source and verify that no trojan has been added by one of the contributors. A checksum doesn’t solve this problem.
Good, then don't use any app outside the App Store. Apple will do their job to keep you perfectly safe from all those nasty, moneygrubbing developers who disagree with their rightful tax. You can remain loyal, but their monopoly literally cannot persist in a just world.
> As for the right to install/manage software, I view it similarly to what the FDA is doing now [...] Is such a view considered insanity?
Not until you start telling me that I don't have a right to eat food that the FDA hasn't approved for me. If you only eat FDA-certified food, good for you. It's a service the government provides free-of-charge, and some people like it. If you try shutting down your next-door neighbor's kid for selling non-certified lemonade, their dad is going to give you a black eye. The problem is, we quite literally lack an institution large enough to give Apple a black eye. There are governments fining them millions of dollars and they shake it off like Godzilla worrying about some pests. Their attitude towards democratic leadership is appalling, and deserves to be brought to heel.
> In the end is all this talk about rights and freedoms really just a veil for the fact that some devs just want to make more money?
It's absolutely mind-blowing that you will say that in defense of a company that consists of "some devs [that] just want to make more money". Yeah, maybe they do want a chance at competing against the largest software company in the world. Is that a big ask? Maybe I want to install FOSS apps that Apple won't let people publish to the app store. You don't have to, but you can't argue that I shouldn't be able to. Apple doesn't have the right to decide which browser I use when I pay for their hardware. They shouldn't make you pay $99/year to temporarily install a nerfed app to your iPhone. It's one of the most oppressive rackets in modern internet history, and I'll gladly refute any arguments against that claim.