Blue sky research should be open. Last mile product development and products themselves can be closed source. Else, how do you create profits and value for shareholders? So far, except Apple, the others have made the outputs of their research labs open: published papers, demos, packages like TensorFlow, etc. Besides, there is a division of labor: govt, with its altruistic mission does open blue-sky research. Companies, OTOH maximize profits and the good ones that can afford to, also do open basic research. I don't see his vision to be counter to this.
The problem is, what qualifies as a “last mile product”? AOL before 1991, and CompuServe before 1989 were complete packages, essentially entire Internets, provided by one company. Neither one of them probably liked the Internet to come into a position to replace a large part of their products. It’s the same everywhere – everybody want to commoditize their complements, but almost every product is a complement to somebody else’s product.
