For years, the strategy was clear: lock users in.
Proprietary formats. Closed ecosystems. Friction to leave. The harder it was to switch, the safer the business.
But that logic is eroding.
Users have grown allergic to walls. They've been burned too many times by platforms that held their data hostage.
And they're starting to choose differently.
Products that export cleanly. Services that connect to other services. Tools that don't punish you for leaving.
Interoperability used to be a weakness — a door left open for competitors.
Now it's becoming a trust signal.
"We make it easy to leave" is a strange selling point. But it works.
Because users who can leave easily often don't. They stay because they chose to, not because they're trapped.
The new moat isn't making it hard to leave. It's making users not want to.
Openness is becoming a competitive advantage.
That's the shift worth noticing.