alt Hacker NewsWe're not just talking about hardware here.
Any standard that is developed closed-source and is protected or proprietary, can and will prevent consumer choice further down the line.
Interoperability of data, choice between vendors, and the ability for smaller players to compete with established larger players are all directly negatively affected by a lack of open standards.
They're negatively affected by a lack of openness. Some proprietary XML nonsense that's well-documented makes interoperability a week's work, maximum. Meanwhile, Microsoft's incomprehensible "open standard OOXML", supported by every document editor I care to name, is a huge impediment to interoperability. Limiting myself to even the well-designed ODF format means there are features I can't implement in my software: standardisation comes at the expense of innovation.
In software, the problem is closedness, protectionism, and undocumentedness, not proprietary wheel reinvention.