There's still an agreement on what's beneficial, even if the how isn't standardized. TO use your bicycle analogy, it's widely accepted that clipping into pedals

There's still an agreement on what's beneficial, even if the how isn't standardized. TO use your bicycle analogy, it's widely accepted that clipping into pedals is beneficial, we've found it improves power transfer and efficiency - the idea of clipping in is standardized, but the implementation (cleat design) is still open for interpretation. We see this in open source too - we can coordinate and all agree on a core idea or problem that needs solving, but still end up with different, competing implementations. It's not a bad thing, choice is good and often leads to innovation as different approaches compete and evolve. I do think you are right on your first point - that inertia of user base is the predictor of what will stick. Even Linux, stuck around due to licensing and availability (and then user inertia from that) rather than any technical superiority.