It's an open protocol and there are open source implementations of the technology. I can use asterisk to set up a phone system and have numbers routed to me from a provider. It's the same as the Internet in that regard.

It's like saying email isn't open source because it has to have a connection to the Internet to be useful.

Yeah I struggle to think of corporations more "unethical" than ATT and VZN.

I've heard stories from multiple people older than me about ATT physically entering people's homes (typically when their husbands were at work) because they had "illegal" extensions.

How about Volkswagen?