Without the free passage of information, software production is bound to fail, just as the Soviet Union failed because it restricted the free flow of information. The same effect will destroy Microsoft and all other manufacturers who will not make their code available to other developers. PCs and widespread use of programming languages were the Cyanobacteria of information technology. The oxygen is the Internet. Now there is hardware and know-how available to generate new beasts of software.
Proprietary software is endemic.