That makes sense. More power to the people who want to tether their phones to an Ethernet port, I suppose that would be nice if you’re downloading a large game or something just to speed it up a little bit.
The Lightning port supported this to via a Lightning>USB-A adapter and then plugging in a USB to Ethernet adapter. I tried this as far back as my iPad Air 2 several years ago, this isn’t a new feature at all.
An Apple Developer account is $99 a year and the only prerequisite to putting an app on the store. If it’s free, there are no other fees. I wouldn’t call $99 a small fortune.
There are many “open source” apps on the App Store, though most may argue they technically are not because you never have the option of compiling yourself, so perhaps “source available” would be more apt. Things like KDE-Connect are on the App Store so clearly there is some demand for iOS counterparts to open source multiplatform applications.