...and one of the things that people find remarkable about it is that it isn't immediately and freely available to everyone on earth.
I'm not too upset, though. The way the technology is progressing, it's a pretty short time span between "the bleeding edge researchers can do it" and "there's a phone app that can do it for free".
Open source is amazing boon to our generation, it has enabled free access to basic building blocks for people to build amazing things. But I don't think it is a silver bullet for everything.
It's a beta that they are running with their own resources. It makes complete sense that they'd have to limit access.