You're missing the point if you're holding up HTML/CSS/JS as a counter-example. In the past, we had a more robust network software ecosystem in which high-leve

You're missing the point if you're holding up HTML/CSS/JS as a counter-example. In the past, we had a more robust network software ecosystem in which high-level protocol semantics were standardized across vendors, ensuring that: - Multiple server implementations existed, and - Multiple client implementations existed, and - Data (the bits owned by users) were portable across those implementations. This creates a healthy, more resilient ecosystem, within which there does not exist a single point of failure, and competition for clients, servers, and services providing the same is robust. HTML/CSS/JS do standardize semantics, but they're application platform semantics -- we get interoperability and choice across browsers and web servers, but we're losing network interoperability between the applications being built on top of them. This isn't limited to the web, either: closed protocols and DRM on mobile (e.g. Apple's iMessage, Facetime) have produced a similar result. Apple controls the messaging clients, the OS, the network protocol, and the servers. If you want to leave, you lose access to everyone else using the protocol. Resiliency is also lost -- a single party controls the entire infrastructure, including the client software.