> A popular open source protocol is actually the perfect playing field for a would-be monopolist.
Whereas when there's no popular open source protocol, the OSS ecosystem upgrades itself fast, like a cheetah? :P Whatever mental model you're using here might just be going over my head and I'd appreciate you being more explicit about it
Microsoft: Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.
What's an example of an open protocol (what this thread is about) where MSFT successfully followed this strategy?
HTML before IE6. At one point Microsoft owned the web browser market to the same degree that Google owns it today.
Anything from this century?
IE6 was the most popular web browser until 2008. It wasn't until 2010 that we finally could somewhat ignore it when it dropped below 20% market share. It was a happy day when I could completely ignore it in corporate in 2018 when it was uninstalled from all computers.
Riiigght, that makes some sense, thank you! Need to consider to understand if open source is really advantageous, but you've pointed out how it might be
> A popular open source protocol is actually the perfect playing field for a would-be monopolist.
At first I thought "email seems a good example of this: most people don't want to leave Google, I don't want to leave FastMail"... but then I remembered that I could just leave FastMail and take my email to Google. Which proves the upthread point about the open protocol being a safety net for users.
Can you talk about some examples of monopolised open protocols?
Email is the paradigmatic example. You can export your mailbox and use `pine` if that's your jam. But in the real world, most users of Gmail will depend on at least one feature of Gmail that isn't easily replicable elsewhere.
I wonder what gmail's churn rate even is? It is surely staggeringly close to zero.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they have more churn via death (people, companies, abandoned projects) than any other single source.
Consequently, a service provider will plow enormous resources into differentiating their service, and generating other lock-in effects, so the users find it hard to leave.
A popular open source protocol is actually the perfect playing field for a would-be monopolist.
The monopolist can make their service better and better with cash and execution, but meanwhile the protocol is stuck at a baseline since a varied ecosystem doesn't upgrade itself as quickly. So it is less and less attractive.