> "I think this argument is disorganized. It reads as if he's arguing for free in favor of paid (which I don't really agree with), but I think he's actually arg

> "I think this argument is disorganized. It reads as if he's arguing for free in favor of paid (which I don't really agree with), but I think he's actually arguing for open in favor of closed (which I do agree with)." That was my thought. He opened by talking about Free, because Reader closing and Mailbox being acquired stirred up a lot of the usual anti-Free-Service backlash. And he discusses free, I think, just to underline that it does work. But I think he went into the weeds (and clearly lost much of the readership there) in discussing why. Which is strange, as I don't think even the anti-Free crowd takes issue with whether Free works and they certainly seem to all understand that it does work. And, ultimately, the "why" part is irrelevant to where he winds up, which is simply that open protocols should be preferred to proprietary ones.