Using history as a guide, SMTP was open. But number of people using gmail+yahoo+hotmail+aol etc (a handful of implementations) account for more than 99% (just a guess) in consumer market? Telephony started off with open standards, but in any country, it still came down to a handful of companies.I would guess that if the telephone market was not geography and government constrained, it would have ended up with a handful of companies for the whole world. These days, I don't even see the trend of something starting open and eventually becoming closed. It starts off closed from the start. facebook, twitter etc. The takeaway, is that, anything that presents users with dead simple thing wins. Anything that makes users do the work loses. People don't care about open or closed. It is always what is easiest. nothing else matters.