You don't need permission from Apple to distribute macOS software. Your users will just see a warning dialog when they try and run it for the first time and have to go to System Settings to allow it to run[0]. If you want to avoid this, you have to pay the $99 USD per year to join the Apple Developer Program, codesign your software with the certificate they give you, and submit it for notarization (which for macOS is a fully-automated security and malware review, unlike iOS notarization which is basically App Store review). It's not ideal (many open-source projects don't want to spend $99 USD per year, and it does tie the software to your real name), but it's not like iOS.

[0]: https://support.apple.com/en-nz/guide/mac-help/mh40616/mac

>More and more platforms are moving in this direction and I wouldn't be surprised if Windows goes the same way in the future.

I think MS has already tried this several times, such as with Windows RT and the Windows store. It never caught on, and they pissed off the independent software vendors who make the Windows ecosystem valuable in the first place. Maybe they just didn't push it hard enough; maybe they could have just forced everyone to use it anyway, and maybe it would have worked because what are Windows users going to do, switch to Linux or Mac? But maybe the real danger was that users simply wouldn't upgrade to the new locked-down Windows in the first place and just stick with older versions forever, which is something they've been doing all along (look how mad people were when they finally killed XP).