The response was more in regards to the grand-OP's desire for a lower level extensible runtime and lamentation about plugins, more than a comparison to standards now that I think about it. In other words, which web is more open:
1. One in which all the code is open source but there are huge hurdles to releasing your own browser, and any new feature is thus at the mercy of just a few big companies (Apple, Google, etc.).
or
2. One in which perhaps all the browsers were closed source, but adding new features to any such browser really was just a matter of referencing a script on a web page?
The questions is more or less only useful as a thought experiment by this point of course, and in particular I don't feel that the "standards" process was ever particularly open to begin with, so I don't think things have, or will, necessarily get much worse.
1. One in which all the code is open source but there are huge hurdles to releasing your own browser, and any new feature is thus at the mercy of just a few big companies (Apple, Google, etc.).
or
2. One in which perhaps all the browsers were closed source, but adding new features to any such browser really was just a matter of referencing a script on a web page?
The questions is more or less only useful as a thought experiment by this point of course, and in particular I don't feel that the "standards" process was ever particularly open to begin with, so I don't think things have, or will, necessarily get much worse.