You can still buy a Mac Pro. Google could have had Reader live on because they are, you know, "open". Except they want everyone to use Google+.
But it doesn't, and Google is not a charity. Whether you believe them to be "open" or not (meaningless statement), being "open" certainly does not commit you to supporting arbitrary protocols indefinitely for the good of the world, especially ones that most people don't use. RSS had its shot, it just can't compete in today's web.
And we'll see for just how long you can still buy the Mac Pro.
It does have a former employee saying Google+ is more of a focus for Google than Reader, but that isn't remotely the same and everyone knew that for quite a while.
After all, before Google Reader’s sharing features were converted to corresponding Google+ ones, users of the soon-to-be-killed service used to share like crazy. Shih postulates, with plenty of logic, that this activity dropped as Google pushed Reader users to sharing on Google+ instead.
If you strongly want "open" to beat "closed social", then maybe RSS dying might be a step in a positive direction, since its had its shot, and proved to just not be useful for people. Now, I personally feel RSS neither hurts nor helps "closed social" in any way, so I think its inconsequential.
But that's it. Anyone I find interesting enough to follow ends up in Feedly.
Every conclusion derived from here is then flawed.
Even more importantly, if you already purchased a Mac Pro, you can still use it. Indefinitely, until it breaks beyond repair.
As a result, I could not get upgrades for some software that required Mountain Lion to use. That, combined with the lack of upgrades, forced me to replace my Mac Pro with a custom built Linux box. It now sits idle in the corner.
Google moving from Reader (RSS/Atom) to Current (unspecified protocols) is less open.
Google moving Calendar from CalDAV to their proprietary Calendar API is less open.
Google potentially moving Talk from XMPP to an unspecified proprietary protocol is less open.
Etc.