I worry that the days of openness - of FOSS and SV startups, as leading examples - might be looked back on as a halcyon nirvana, a wild and free era, remembered

I worry that the days of openness - of FOSS and SV startups, as leading examples - might be looked back on as a halcyon nirvana, a wild and free era, remembered by the few who understand what openness means and what its implications were, and who still remember as new generations grow up accustomed to something else. In the case of something so fundamentally technical, most of the public doesn't understand it; they would not understand the significance and what it has begotten. How many noticed what happened to the streetcars? How many Americans notice their horrible healthcare system, despite overwhelming evidence of far better alternatives? Look at the CPTPP[0], net neutrality, and this proposed law. Look at the brazen abuse of power by big business in Washington (and in American state capitals and in Seattle and in campaign finance). If you think horrible laws won't happen, won't become fate; if you think it will work out in the end, you haven't read history. There not only have been horrible things like segregation and mass incarceration, which (have) lasted generations, or war upon war, but again and again industry has seized power and cemented their position, and soon it becomes a norm that nobody notices, with vested interests that won't want to change. Look at the current patent system, as a modern, IT-implicated example. Or a better example: Most people blindly accept region restrictions, for example on films, as a norm - maybe something they try to workaround, but an inevitable situation; it's not. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17313484 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17313484 EDIT: Added region restrictions example