“The problem at hand is that Apple’s macOS App Store is automatically rejecting apps that contain the string “itms-services”.”
The string sits in Python’s urllib parser whether or not an app ever touches that URL scheme. Apple named the offending files only after the developer filed an appeal. Python’s answer is a build option that strips the code, because there is no channel to complain to Apple and expect a policy change. Apple runs a text search over your bundle and open source maintainers absorb the cost.