Centralization Is Inevitable

Re:Centralization Is Inevitable by the_other on Tuesday November 01, 2022 @04:23PM (#33426966)

> 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?

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Re:Centralization Is Inevitable by neilk on Tuesday November 01, 2022 @05:27PM (#33427747)

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.

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Re:Centralization Is Inevitable by giobox on Tuesday November 01, 2022 @05:32PM (#33427815)

I wonder what gmail's churn rate even is? It is surely staggeringly close to zero.

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Re:Centralization Is Inevitable by sokoloff on Wednesday November 02, 2022 @04:16AM (#33432644)

I wouldn’t be surprised if they have more churn via death (people, companies, abandoned projects) than any other single source.

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Re:Centralization Is Inevitable by the_other on Thursday November 03, 2022 @06:52PM (#33459073)

> Email is the paradigmatic example

But there's no monopoly. There's feature-based lock-in built around the open protocols, and it's very effective, but it's not a monopoly.

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