[neilv]

Techies and power users often create network effects, in how they contribute to and promote what they use.

This is one of the reasons it's so troubling when some techies latch onto some very closed platform (sometimes by a known-underhanded company) and start making it more attractive to others, by making open source software specific to it, making tutorials on hot employability topics that implicitly use the platform, etc. When open platforms exist, and could also benefit from this contribution and promotion.

At first it was "Jeebus, I wonder what's going on with that one person, who normally uses open source, stabbing themself in the back like that." Then it became "Jeebus, are we losing open platform ground with the majority of an entire generation of techies, after we'd finally won." (I have good guesses about why, and I also know at least a couple early maneuvers that I can't talk about, but it's still dismaying how vapid the collective behavior can be.)