I am not forgetting the existence of licensing concerns, but they are not exactly relevant. A) The presence of licensing software is irrelevant to the existenc

I am not forgetting the existence of licensing concerns, but they are not exactly relevant. A) The presence of licensing software is irrelevant to the existence of something between a big box store and the App Store. Talking about the ecosystem as if people did not sell software electronically before the App Store is simply disingenuous. B) Times have changed, it's easier to handle that stuff yourself using free software or with software packages that take less than a 30% cut. C) You know what didn't need that licensing software? Free and/or OSS software. That simply isn't an option on iOS. Further, even if you wanted to enforce that on your paid software you may have used a publishing company, but you weren't artificially limited to a single one.