>It's against their business interest to create a product that works with their competitors.
There's more to it than a simplistic "business interest" to explain it.
For example, the Signal protocol is free to use. No payments for patent royalties or software licenses required. Moxie Marlinspike's company Signal LLC (Open WhisperSystems) is a non-profit entity.
But notice that an organization that isn't pressured into making a profit and that's using an underlying free protocol -- does not want to federate with LibreSignal[0].
This an example of where the "openness of a protocol" runs into a hard reality of "closed wall of implementation". The protocols themselves can cost $0 but implementations (e.g. cpu+disk+bandwidth+staff) cost more than $0 which leads to complaints of it being "not really open".
If people do not examine the economic forces surrounding any protocol, they will always be perplexed why the internet is not as free & open as they think it should be. Even non-profit entities are not immune from economic forces.
There's more to it than a simplistic "business interest" to explain it.
For example, the Signal protocol is free to use. No payments for patent royalties or software licenses required. Moxie Marlinspike's company Signal LLC (Open WhisperSystems) is a non-profit entity.
But notice that an organization that isn't pressured into making a profit and that's using an underlying free protocol -- does not want to federate with LibreSignal[0].
This an example of where the "openness of a protocol" runs into a hard reality of "closed wall of implementation". The protocols themselves can cost $0 but implementations (e.g. cpu+disk+bandwidth+staff) cost more than $0 which leads to complaints of it being "not really open".
If people do not examine the economic forces surrounding any protocol, they will always be perplexed why the internet is not as free & open as they think it should be. Even non-profit entities are not immune from economic forces.
[0] https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37#issueco...