Pragmatic system design to overcome rigidities is the logic that initially motivates much of the business behavior that produces large scale trusts, like Standard Oil, or AT&T, or Microsoft. They buy up companies that are steps in their own process hoping to smooth the way. This is the desire, I think, which is other to greed, that motivates business development and expansion. These companies were eventually brought to trial for anti-competitive behavior and were, one by one, broken into smaller pieces by the United States Department of Justice. The anti-trust legislation exists because the ways of moving toward commonality eventually can produce a system which, instead of smoothing the way, solidifies it, and then dominates it. These monopolies or oligopolies reify and regulate difference in the interest of a collective, and this, we had learned painfully by 1968, is not actually in the interest of long term growth, or of personal freedom, or of innovation.
“DARPA needed some kind of common base for the sake of efficiency. But to get people to choose a single hardware vendor was not a serious proposition. Even though the VAX was the sure favorite, research groups needed different computers and no one liked the idea of becoming dependent on a single large hardware manufacturer at what was obviously a very early stage in the evolution of modern computing.
The solution was to try and achieve greater compatibility at the level of software, particularly operating systems. And in that discussion Unix had several advantages over DEC’s own VMS and other alternatives. According to at least one DARPA official, the availability of the source code for Unix was a serious consideration.
It seemed natural to pool and share their knowledge, to keep software open to expand its usability; to foster ongoing development and competition in the hardware market; and to grow this small and specialized group beyond monopolies.” (weber)