What we've seen isn't users showing how they feel about federated systems, it's users being forced into walled gardens as closed systems added support for open systems, but open systems could not reciprocate, and the market adjusted.

If your choice as a user is to buy an iPhone that can communicate with your Apple friends over imessage and Android friends over hangouts, or buy an android phone and not access anyone through imessage, there's an advantage to Apple there. Google just decided to level the playing field (if slightly) by privatizing the hangouts protocol, and we all lost out a bit because of it.

Federation isn't something most people even experienced throughout all that, so it's hard to think it was factored in, even a few times removed, from their decision.

" it's users being forced into walled gardens as closed systems added support for open systems, but open systems could not reciprocate, and the market adjusted."

We haven't seen users forced to do much of anything. In general, there's multiple ways of achieving their goals. They almost always pick either a proprietary company that likes lock-in or a free, ad-driven solution that sells them out. They neither take time to understand the consequences of that ahead of time nor cared enough to switch in the years I've explained it to hundreds (thousands?) of them. Very, very few would switch. And for social media, it's usually a network effect they're joining where stadiums worth of people would have to switch at once or close together to avoid chicken-and-egg problem. They could collectively use open standards to communicate like open-source IM and buddy lists but most don't given they'll sacrifice control of their data and privacy for convenience.

There is a market effect like you describe where the suppliers benefit from lock-in. That's been steady a long time with even the open standards often intended to catch new customers in lock-in in other ways. On the demand side, though, the masses haven't used open-source as a factor in their purchasing much at all. So, it's not even a differentiator on their end for most suppliers to target. The market didn't even adjust: it defaulted on lock-in strategies for owners' benefit with companies occasionally experimenting with other methods they sometimes reversed.

> We haven't seen users forced to do much of anything.

Well, it depends on how you want to interpret forced. Sure, they aren't required to use a product, but if you've been using Gtalk for years, and that's how everyone knows to get hold of you and how you get hold of people, and it's an open protocol (XMPP) which you can and do use through a third party client (e.g. Pidgin), when they switch to Hangouts you are forced to use their proprietary client and protocol if you want to keep the same contact list without making everyone switch. It's not strictly "forcing", but Google is exerting force to drive customers to a different usage.

I'm not sure any centralized IM service that expected to compete would have done different and survived with any appreciable market share, but that the ones that existed switched is notable.

> On the demand side, though, the masses haven't used open-source as a factor in their purchasing much at all.

The benefits of an open system aren't readily apparent to many people until they start experiencing the problems of a closed system. Closed systems have numerous benefits at the starting stage the open systems don't (for example, a clear way to monetize that works in line with people's expectations and human nature). We were lucky with the internet because it was federated by design (and necessity, pretty much), and grew to the point that it would be too costly to close the protocol before gaining too much popularity. Even so, we're seeing pushes to in that direction. Maybe when the problems of the closed IM systems become apparent enough, we'll actually have some more widespread adoption of open systems. WRT human nature and systems such as these, I'm not sure we've even seen full cycles of how people perceive and deal with the systems (we're only now really having a sizable group of adults that have always had the internet WRT the population as a whole), so a lot of how people deal with open/closed systems over time is still in flux.

P.S. Long time no see/read. Nice to have a conversation with you again. :)

" Sure, they aren't required to use a product, but if you've been using Gtalk for years, and that's how everyone knows to get hold of you and how you get hold of people"

There's the problem right there. They created a dependency on a single provider that could turn on them at any time. Many providers have gone out of business or done unscrupulous things. One should always have alternatives if anything is really important. In this case, they usually solely rely on one provider for convenience when not also cost (sometimes trivial cost). Still true for things like Facebook.

They walked right into a big problem because convenience or apathy about risks trumped everything. From there, they can be forced in the way you describe to go along with what vendor wants. At that point, they might also start switching and/or avoid doing that sort of thing in the future. In many cases, they avoid the switching cost and do the same kinds of things in other services. Their very nature is to willingly create opportunities for suppliers to cause them problems.

Even as they do this, there's a small subset of the market doing either the opposite or taking steps to limit the damage which make me think this is more willing than forced. If anything, history has shown we have to use things like regulations to force market participants to behave more safely on average. They usually don't do it on their own because they don't want to or don't care. Seatbelts when driving are the classic example.

"The benefits of an open system aren't readily apparent to many people until they start experiencing the problems of a closed system."

I agree. We probably need a way to quickly present that when they make these choices. Enough of the market making an informed choice might sustain more alternatives that are better. This already happens with at least some of the FOSS market where the buyers specifically liked the benefits of open source. The wider, long-term effects you describe will also be interesting to watch. We might see some of the FOSS-friendly decisions on consumer side as they see the benefits or experience the detriments.

"Long time no see/read. Nice to have a conversation with you again. :)"

Likewise, buddy. Although I comment less, I've read plenty of yours. Usually insightful and enjoyable. :)

> They walked right into a big problem because convenience or apathy about risks trumped everything.

Well, or just lack of knowledge, and lack of knowledge about lack of knowledge. I think from our positions it's easy to overlook that. Sure, it seems like people are becoming more technically literate, and they are, but I think when it comes to knowing what you can do, and knowing what you should do, the latter comes well after the forming in almost all exploratory loarning (which internet usage mostly is). We've heard the historical stories (myths), that impart this knowledge. Usually we've lived a few cases of it as well. Even then, it doesn't always take right away, or we get caught out not heeding our own advice. I can't fault a largely novice internet populace for not having had the same conditioning we have.

That doesn't mean they are off the hook though. You're right, there's a shitload of ignoring the signs in favor of convenience and general apathy, it's just not the entire story.

> If anything, history has shown we have to use things like regulations to force market participants to behave more safely on average.

I agree with regulations. I just vastly prefer them to target the specific problems and not try to get too complex with mechanics. Sometimes that requires really looking into the problem, and it can be a hard sell if the general audience for choosing/voting the implementation doesn't have enough knowledge. In this case, I think a lot of the problem all stems from using personal information as currency. Strong regulations on the collection, notification, maintenance, and ability to force removal of personal information by remote entities would make what the real cost is of the systems obvious (you know what they collect and how it's used, or in some cases you know what actual money you pay since that will become a much more viable model again). Open source cometes well in that market, because the actual costs are all apparent instead of hidden.

> We probably need a way to quickly present that when they make these choices.

I have hope this is a problem that will be mostly solved through the normal way societal best practices are passed down, from mentors (parents, teachers, trusted authorities). We just need to get to a point where the mentors actually know this stuff, which requires time and them being bitten by it and learning the hard way, or reading about those stories, or eventually learning it from their mentors. When your Mom or Dad is usually the one that cautions you at an early age to beware any free service that might be trading on your personal info, we've reached a good equilibrium (but we'll still have issues with those that don't have as much access to mentors, which is a constant societal problem).

> most gmail users never see messages from my personal email address, because google routes them to spam despite my IP never having spammed

This is off topic but very briefly: implement SPF and DKIM and get a number of Gmail users (I'm not sure what this number is, but it is order of magnitude 10) to mark your emails as "Not Spam". Eventually Gmail will come to accept emails from your self-hosted server.