I can see why they add the fee, but they would both garner so much goodwill by giving free accounts if the app you publish is open source. I don't think it would be that hard to automate by requiring a GitHub link.

Those days are over. Being evil means there is no goodwill to begin with unless you can exploit it financially wise. Google stopped being not evil, they specifically deleted it from the code of conduct.

Ofc, being evil is subjective. But also this is the first excuse of evil players!

[dead]

> goodwill

Doesn't seem like something they consider a positive though.