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This gets repeated a lot, and might be true (apparently the patent lawsuit forced Apple to change the implementation to be less peer-to-peer?), but lore says that Steve Jobs announcing Facetime as an open standard was a surprise to everyone working on Facetime.

If only Apple was big enough to fight the patent trolls...

They have - for over a decade. It took time to invalidate the patents and the damages:

https://www.reuters.com/legal/apple-wins-reversal-502-mln-vi...

If only they hadn't fought the patent troll, and were denied the ability to bring a new suit when they lost.

Prove it

Not killed. Apple decided not to charge for non-Apple users and not to provide it for free either. They were only prevented from doing P2P connections, not from opening the protocol.

Or maybe it could've even been federated... not that Apple likes to play nice with anyone else.

Which is funny given that WhatsApp started as a very popular paid service. They could've been that for iMessage and extended it to calls.