Except people still release protocols. Just look at https://matrix.org/
IRC is an early protocol and wasn't designed for extensibility purposes. A new chat protocol just needs to replace it.
IRC is an early protocol and wasn't designed for extensibility purposes. A new chat protocol just needs to replace it.
- Jami
- Matrix
- Signal Protocol
- XMPP
The better question: why aren't new and existing technology companies embracing these protocols and making them ubiquitous?
Personally I think it's because companies have a vested interest in creating walled gardens. The more users that are forced onto a platform, the more money they make. It's against their business interest to create a product that works with their competitors.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_instant_messagin...
Because they don't want to be at the behest of protocol maintainers to improve their product? Their goals and the goals of maintainers would never align.
Open source is great, but open source moves at slow pace compared to what a revenue-driven company can. There's a reason that most of the big open source projects have a company backing them.
Complaints about corporations capturing HTML are not new; Google is merely the latest in the line. (That's not to diminish the fact that it's still bad every time. It's just this isn't the first time.)
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...