I am very well aware of the criticisms against PGP-as-a-model and I actually agree with them. The premise that having an open protocol makes changes 10x harder to actually spread is very true. I still believe that it's better to have that than everyone doing the same thing over and over and over again, "but this time it's better".

HTTP, javascript and TLS have also shown that a sufficiently motivated set of actors can move the ecosystem forward. True, organizing the ecosystem is not the same job as actually building stuff, but it's still beneficial to all of us.