MS engineer Vinod Valloppillil, 
originally distributed within Microsoft on Aug 11, 1998
How to decommoditize a protocol

There are six things you can do:

    * Make it more complex
    * Incompletely specify it
    * Fail to document it
    * Change it rapidly
    * Use encumbered intellectual property
    * Add value (i.e. solve more problems, better performance) 

Of these, only the last really makes the software more useful to users.