If we had to relay exclusively on non-proprietary protocols, I doubt that GNU/Linux would have gone anywhere beyond the Commodore 64

Linux never ran on the Commodore 64 (1984). That was way before Linux was released by Linus Torvalds (1991).

I’d also like to point out that we do all rely on non-proprietary protocols. Examples you used today: TCP and HTTP.

If we didn’t have free and open source protocols we’d all still be using Prodigy and AOL. “Smart” devices couldn’t talk to each other, and the world of software would be 100-10,000x more expensive and we’d probably have about 1/1,000,000th of what we have available today.

Every little thing we rely on every day from computers to the Internet to cars to planes only works because they’re not relying on exclusive, proprietary protocols.