Doc Searls admits he got it wrong when he expected the world to prefer flat, distributed, open and free technology ecosystems over silo'd centralized, closed and proprietary ones. post 
One example is XMPP, originally called Jabber. It was meant to bridge or replace all the competing proprietary instant-messaging systems in use at that time: AOL's AIM and ICQ, Microsoft's MSN, Yahoo's Messenger, Apple's whatever-it-was (now called iMessage) and so on.
Yes, XMPP turned into a widely used standard and either supplied or inspired lots of messaging systems. But today, instant messaging is almost entirely silo'd, and it's more popular than ever.
I'm past believing that the role of free and open will ever be obvious to the world of developers, businesses and governing bodies. Muggles have always outnumbered wizards and always will.
Being out of sight and mind for most of the world doesn't make us wrong. In fact, it might just make us right in ways most will never see, no matter how much they depend on what we do.
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Free and open will not succeed unless it delivers an obvious value that can't be found any other way. But free and open at the transport level enables silos at the application level. There one can give with one hand and take with the other.