I've been thinking about this a bit, and I think it would be possible to setup a non-profit, 'Federation Authority' (if you will), that could transparently govern a network of independent operators (that interoperate). Wikipedia works pretty well (IMO), and there would be an opportunity to iterate on their model (e.g. live web stream of board meetings).

I believe with enough traction, we could get hedge funds to give money while shorting the publicly traded companies that operate walled-garden networks.

N.B. I read your link when it was written originally, and have not taken the time to go at the issues raised point-for-point, but I'd like to see more efforts made in the direction I mentioned above.

Edit: The protocol has to have federation built-in from the beginning, and the ability of any server to granularly discriminate against any given TLD at their operator's discretion.