Competition is desirable because it aligns with society’s goals of innovation and progress which also imply increased productivity and lower prices.
Artificial barriers to entry are contrary to that and if they’re not illegal they should be.
Artificial barriers to entry are contrary to that and if they’re not illegal they should be.
I fully admit that there are natural barriers that occur at times. I don't think that you should be expected to reverse-engineer your competitor's products and bend over backwards to make them work better.
Here, for a concrete example, Intel had a clear choice to test whether a processor supported a feature by checking a feature flag - It's in the name, they're literally implemented for that exact purpose - or they could expend extra effort in building their own feature flag database by checking manufacturer and part number. They could have either expended extra effort to launch and distribute their own entire custom Python distribution, or submitted pull requests to the existing main distribution. For another example, Apple could have used industry-standard Phillips or Torx screws in their hardware: Manufacturers had lines to produce them, distributors had inventory of the fasteners, users had tools to turn them. Instead, they went to great expense to build their own incompatible tri-lobe screws, requiring probably millions of dollars in investment in custom tooling and production lines, all for the sake of creating an artificial barrier.