Whether locked down technologies "tend" to lose depends on what categories of technologies you count.
A common mistake when speaking of closed vs. open systems is to look at a very narrow set of technologies and product categories, often limited to PCs, and extrapolate from that to other kinds of technologies, like smart phones. But the world of technology is bigger than that, much bigger.
You've got everything from enterprise solutions, to consumer electronics, to embedded technologies. People want "open" and "freedom" in general purpose computing solutions, but people (regular people) tend to not even reflect on that in consumer electronics, like gaming consoles, GPS-devices, or the software in their cars. And, the last few years, many classes of computers are becoming more and more like consumer electronics devices, and less like PCs.
Suffice to say, there are quite a few markets and product categories that are traditionally completely "locked down" or "closed" or "integrated", or whatever you want to call them, that absolutely do not "tend to lose in the end".
The parts of the market that have high barriers to entry benefit lesser from openness because its hard for an open alternative to bootstrap itself. The barriers to entry can be regulation (medical devices, hospital IT systems), cartels (music industry), financial (cost of developing custom hardware).
It seems to me that people also tend to severely underestimate the amount of embedded systems in their life. The tech savvy sometimes think about systems in their car or their office elevator. Most people dont know and dont care. And we arent even talking about the electronics/software that runs the fancy coffee machine or that thermostat.
As a tinkerer I had like to have (secure) access to some of these things. But as you said most people don't really care. And manufacturers have little incentive to open it up.
> Suffice to say, there are quite a few markets and product categories that are traditionally completely "locked down" or "closed" or "integrated", or whatever you want to call them, that absolutely do not "tend to lose in the end".
Hm, that could very well be. Could you give an example or two?
For example a GPS device in the car may be proprietary as you said, but a car itself isn't. Not sure about particular patents and rules, but can't anyone with enough investment start making cars? Gaming also isn't restricted to game consoles either. Or maybe I'm just thinking about different categories.
Even stories that are in the public domain are probably better known to most people because there were more movies made about them and more references were made in culture.
Openness allows things to become ubiquitous, but yeah, it's probably a difference if you talk about phone operating systems or cooking recipes. But still.. What Linus says rings true to me.
Game consoles, cars and GPS-devices are closed in the same sense that Macs, iPhones and iPads are. The vendor supplies the product as a complete integrated experience, not as hardware that you install whichever software you want on.
A common mistake when speaking of closed vs. open systems is to look at a very narrow set of technologies and product categories, often limited to PCs, and extrapolate from that to other kinds of technologies, like smart phones. But the world of technology is bigger than that, much bigger.
You've got everything from enterprise solutions, to consumer electronics, to embedded technologies. People want "open" and "freedom" in general purpose computing solutions, but people (regular people) tend to not even reflect on that in consumer electronics, like gaming consoles, GPS-devices, or the software in their cars. And, the last few years, many classes of computers are becoming more and more like consumer electronics devices, and less like PCs.
Suffice to say, there are quite a few markets and product categories that are traditionally completely "locked down" or "closed" or "integrated", or whatever you want to call them, that absolutely do not "tend to lose in the end".