[fineman]

I don't think the only store in town selling widgets has a widget monopoly unless there's something preventing another store from selling widgets. Until then they're just first-movers.

But I will agree about Github. They had time to build lock-in and didn't.

[mangeletti]

A monopoly exists when a specific person or enterprise is the only supplier of a particular commodity[1], so it doesn't really matter that another provider could join the market.

To be fair, GitHub is really part of an oligopoly, comprised of themselves, BitBucket, and GitLab, but the winner of a majority of market share in this situation is typically referred to as a monopoly, in the same sense that Google is referred to as a monopoly, despite the existence of Bing, Yahoo!, and other search engines.

For context, according to Compete, GitHub had 24 times as many unique visits as BitBucket last month. GitLab has about half to one third the traffic of BitBucket.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly

[fineman]

From your reference, I think this supports the other meaning:

> The verb "monopolise" refers to the process by which a company gains the ability to raise prices or exclude competitors.

As I see it, without that ability to exclude, it's not a monopoly.

In a market without lock-in, or lock-out depending on your PoV, I can start selling widgets at any time and will do so whenever your profit margin gets too sweet. You're competing against me even if I'm not actively selling yet.