FSF takes on Apple's App Store over GPL

redistribution rights for what?

I don't see how any of this prevents an arbitrarily large group of users (having paid Apple's "developer" tax) from all working on a GPL'd program and simply compiling it locally. They all pay the tax, they all give just their own device ID to Apple, and then they compile and install new versions from source as they please, like a mid-1990s Linux system.

If the idea is that Apple's rules forbid you from giving someone else the rights to any software you developed to run on an iPhone then they have a big problem - that's a huge business for lots of their developers (big company hires agile iPhone dev shop to make an app, the big company keeps the rights), I'd guess probably the majority, so they're threatening to kill their golden goose if they enforce such a rule.