> Take a moment to contemplate out how Coke and Pepsi (ostensibly commodities) can dominate their channels in a supposedly free market - it's a little bit simil

> Take a moment to contemplate out how Coke and Pepsi (ostensibly commodities) can dominate their channels in a supposedly free market - it's a little bit similar. You're comparing beverage companies with a market share of 30-40 percent (or less depending how you narrowly you define competitors) to Microsoft with a market share ranging from 70-90 percent. Note microsoft was able to come from behind and succeed mostly before the days of software patents. Open source is perversely helped by IP laws because it's the only way to create an alternative that can survive. Like bitcoin being anonymous, versus e-gold which was shut down by the govt. Great except we have to wait for hobbyists and others with free time to waste before competing ideas can get implemented. As for hardware being worse than software without IP protection, well it sure is worse than software with IP protection. So I guess it'll stay consistent. Maybe the lesson is the nature of hardware is to be commoditized, so you need to put your value in the bundled software.