[at1as]

RCS is an open standard that Apple now uses as well.

I think there's a legitimate concern about having essentially two phone platforms, and how anything can really be "open" in that environment. But it's definitely a step forward.

And Google has built proprietary things on top of the standard, which is indeed concerning.

[NoGravitas]

"Open" is an overstatement when it comes to RCS. You can't go out and write a new RCS client for Android, and you can't provide RCS on a new platform (or even unGoogled Android). It's open to the extent that both Google and Apple can use it; other major hardware vendors and carriers could, but don't (Samsung used to, and dropped it earlier this year).

[direwolf20]

It requires you to have a whitelisted private key to make devices that use RCS