Can't we ask legislators to clarify their own legislation?

At the same time I do believe that this reading wasn't the intended one, so the law was badly written.

What makes court battles about this so annoying is that it turns laws from, in this case, rules about ethical businesses into word games.

It doesn't, Apple *generates* ambiguity for obvious reasons

Here is a simple example:

"shall allow business users, free of charge, to communicate and promote offers," is ambiguous because Apple doesn't charge, but demands return on its investments in those business users via distribution platform support. See, I've created "ambiguity" around the "simple" word "charge".

So it's not a comma that costs anything, it's the intention of the regulators to remove some mandatory payments

> This lengthy sentence creates ambiguity: what exactly does "free of charge" apply to? Apple claims it only applies to “communicate” and “promote,” meaning the right to insert redirect links in an app. But not to “conclude contracts,” meaning making purchases. Based on that, Apple argues it can still charge commissions on those external transactions.

Malicious compliance go brrrrrrrrrr

Which raises the question: how are we this far into that change with Apple being informed that the EU meant something else?

To me, the optics are terrible on both sides. It's easy to be uncharitable to Apple for preserving their income stream, but it's equally just to be uncharitable to the EU for fishing for reasons to leverage what will certainly be a disproportionate fine instead of clarifying their position early. It's quite clear what they want is fine-revenue, not actual developer protections.