It's not about the best solution, and everyone needs to stop pretending it is. This sort of thing comes down to which solution has the most corporate backing. The only exceptions are when an open solution happens to hold on for long enough (on the order of years) for a major player to realize that its good and maybe they should give it a chance (example: OpenStack's support by PayPal right now, or when Linux finally started going someplace in the early 2000's with Canonical and RedHat). Give me an example of 'the best solution' winning despite major corporate backing of the proprietary competitor?
I don't think it's even as simple as corporate backing, though that certainly plays a part. It's significantly the arbitrary whims of the population; Whatsapp was not corporate backed, and still captured huge marketshare.
So start your own communications network. Market it. Make it open. May the best solution win.
It's not about the best solution, and everyone needs to stop pretending it is. This sort of thing comes down to which solution has the most corporate backing. The only exceptions are when an open solution happens to hold on for long enough (on the order of years) for a major player to realize that its good and maybe they should give it a chance (example: OpenStack's support by PayPal right now, or when Linux finally started going someplace in the early 2000's with Canonical and RedHat). Give me an example of 'the best solution' winning despite major corporate backing of the proprietary competitor?
I don't think it's even as simple as corporate backing, though that certainly plays a part. It's significantly the arbitrary whims of the population; Whatsapp was not corporate backed, and still captured huge marketshare.