When did Apple say they were going to open iMessage? I do recall Steve Jobs saying this about Facetime [1] during its announcement, and that a) it was a surprise to the team building it, and b) was abandoned when Apple was sued for patent infringement by patent troll VirnetX [2], causing them to change the protocol from peer-to-peer to server-based.

[1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/1xuzif/what_ever_hap... [2]: https://www.engadget.com/2017/10/16/apple-faces-440-million-...

Feel free to thanks VirnetX about that... https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/10/17222380/apple-virtnetx-p...

It tough to blame Apple for not open-sourcing a protocol they are sued about by a patent troll. Until resolved properly this would be a toxic code-base anyway.

Of course they could restart from scratch, but I guess they have no incentive to make efforts about that. What will be meaningful however is be what they'll do after patent exhaustion date of infringed VirnetX "patents".

They were going to open FaceTime, not iMessage.