The web didn't plunge into the dark ages because people gave away their labor or because they didn't buy proprietary stuff. It was because Microsoft stopped developing IE after it had reached market dominance.
And what brought the web back out of the dark ages? An open source browser (Firefox).
Sorry for the lack of clarity. Case #2 is only meant to illustrate that commoditization has harmful effects of innovation. Microsoft, for a time, commoditized the browser market, which harmed web innovation. I don't think that's in dispute.
My overall argument is thus:
A. Commoditization is not necessarily good. It often harms innovation (supported by case study #1 and #2)
B. Open source is a kind of commoditization
C. A and B together implies that open source is not necessarily good.
By the way, I would argue that it wasn't open source that enabled Firefox to save the web. It was the fact that Google was making lots of profit on web search ads, and used that money to fund Firefox's development. The fact that Firefox was open source, is incidental.
The web didn't plunge into the dark ages because people gave away their labor or because they didn't buy proprietary stuff. It was because Microsoft stopped developing IE after it had reached market dominance.
And what brought the web back out of the dark ages? An open source browser (Firefox).