> big tech

That's why.

TCP/IP was DARPA, so publicly (taxpayer) funded. The first HTTPd was public domain. WiFi was a bit of a combo of Vic Hayes & Bell Labs, IEEE and a research org so not exactly a public or public domain project.

Big tech and profit/rent seeking is literally the problem. Things don't interoperate because it's not profitable for them to interoperate.

We stopped undertaking large public works projects in tech and outsourced it all to private companies. Big tech is literally the problem.

This is why free and open source software is so important.

How different would things look if httpd wasn't public domain, and Tim instead started a tech company, made it proprietary, etc.

So does this constitute an example that the liberal ideal of companies competing for the best product -with no or minimal amount of public money forced to go this way for public development- ends up becoming basically a miserable and lacking experience for end users during decades? (admittedly it sounds to me like if private companies had invented TCP-IP, the consequences would basically be terrible connectivity products nowadays)