| Look them up. People have written books and articles on this stuff. Here are a few: * http://www.dwheeler.com/oss_fs_why.html * Internet Explorer in the 2000's. * Look how Microsoft got everyone by the balls with Office software for many years. * Look up the whole Bitkeeper fiasco with the Linux kernel. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vendor_lock-in * Did you catch all those people freaking out because Parse is shutting down? * Were you there when Twitter shut down a lot of people integrating with it? * Unix is fairly open in terms of its interface, but plenty of people got stuck on proprietary ones over the years, only to see most all of them disappear in favor of Linux and the various BSDs. I'm no RMS, and don't have problems with proprietary software, but am very wary of getting locked in to something, rather than simply buying a product that I use and can easily switch away from when there's something better that comes out. And chat protocols are very much about positive network externalities that leave you tied to something, like it or not. |