Right, I know Windows isn't free. My point is, it's the same situation with OS X, and with iMessage. Just because OS X is made by the hardwae developers doesn't change it. Windows still isn't free on Surface laptops, believe me that the OS team gets a cut of hardware sales.
Maybe it seems confusing because OS X isn't sold as a standalone product, but consider how Apple cracks down on Hackintoshes. They definitely consider it stealing.
Hackintosh isn't cracked down on. Commercial use of it is. I had an osx snow leopard partition I hackintoshed and I was trying old HDDs and it booted on my netbook. Most of the times it doesn't work is based on broken APIs or changes that aren't related to osx. 10.8 or 10.7 was the first free osx and the first one that included iMessage.
The difference is that my device isn't incompatible, Apple just doesn't want me to run iMessage on it. They don't just not care, they're actively blocking companies that released clients.
There’s iMessage the app and then there’s the proprietary Apple Push Notification Service. that Apple use in its implementation.
The iMessage app is incompatible with non Apple devices - there is no iMessage app available period outside of those that run on Apple operating systems.
The APN is not licensed for “public” third party usage unless permission is explicitly and expressly granted by Apple.
So yes, your non Apple device is 100% incompatible with iMessage, and unauthorized usage of the underlying APNs is illegal under the Apple Terms of Service.
1) you have a device
2) you have software
If you buy the software, it is paid.
If you do not buy the software, its free.
If the software is not available for your device that does make it not free; you just have an incompatible device.
Any other take on this is subscribing to some bias.
Paper clips, are not relevant.
There is a distinction, to be fair, between “free open source software” which is free and you can take it and port it to your device if you want.
…but no one is claiming iMessage is FOSS, and when someone says it is “free”, that is not what they mean.