Your points are all well stated and true. I agree with everything you have said. And yet it is also true that the end-users can have a significant amount of i

Your points are all well stated and true. I agree with everything you have said. And yet it is also true that the end-users can have a significant amount of influence in how quickly the marketplace provides more choice and more open solutions. Most immediately they can choose the more open solution instead of the one that provides more of a walled garden (such as selecting android over the iphone). They can, at least in less capital intensive fields, choose to enter themselves and provide a more open solution (as certain Linux providers have done). In the extreme, they can lobby for legislation or regulation to require or at least support openness and choice. While I generally support a very light regulatory touch, there are some rare and extreme cases where it is appropriate. While everything you say is true, those who wish to resist walled gardens and proprietary traps can choose to do so in an active and conscious way, rather than merely waiting for the inevitable (yet sometimes slow) march of technology to bring this openness.