Comment by porcoda

I'm all for this more open internet without the walled gardens, but skeptical that we'll get there simply by creating open alternatives. Not only is there a massive amount of inertia behind the walled garden networks that exist now, but you need people to build these complex things. Given how focused most engineers are on compensation (e.g., the obsession with FAANG as the pinnacle), I don't see how open things that likely don't have such a gigantic mountain of money behind it can compete for the necessary resources to execute the vision. Compensation will probably always pull the people who build stuff to the walled garden companies and the alternative will have trouble providing a competitive alternative. Plus, it seems inevitable that if some entity DOES start to build an open alternative to the walled gardens, at some point they'll feel the itch to grow, and slowly but surely I expect little tiny walls will begin to subtly sprout. Email is a bit of a bad comparison since the protocols existed BEFORE the big companies we see today, and that sort of meant they all interoperated from the start. Had we not had email in 1990 and different companies had to come up with their own messaging systems, we'd probably not see the clean interoperability we see today.