> Open protocols, or non profit open source projects will never compete with true entrepreneurship and hardcore entrepreneurs creating products. Meditate on th

> Open protocols, or non profit open source projects will never compete with true entrepreneurship and hardcore entrepreneurs creating products. Meditate on the fact you're posting this on the Internet, as opposed to CompuServe's or AOL's own networks, and say that again. In addition to the fact you're drawing a false dichotomy between Open Source and open protocols and business, no business has ever created a fundamental communications network of the scale or success of the Internet, and none have even come close even though they tried. AOL, CompuServe, Tymshare... they're all dead and buried or absorbed into the Internet to the point they no longer have an independent existence on the technical level. You can say this about programming languages: Compare the success of Python to the success of AutoLISP or even the success of Lisp Machine Lisp to the success of Emacs Lisp. I can't think of a single widely-used programming language which is only available in a proprietary implementation. (And by widely-used I mean beyond a single OS and beyond a single industry.)