Standards are key.

Harald Alvestrand, “The role of the standards process in shaping the Internet,” IEEE, 08-09-2004, https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/1323284/authors#authors

The Internet has been a great vehicle for economic growth. Many companies have made fortunes out of supplying equipment and services for the Internet.

It has also been a great vehicle for increasing communication between individuals all over the globe, allowing international cooperation at a hitherto undreamed-of scale.

The rise of the Internet depended on standards: namely, that if one created hardware, software, and applications that followed a consistent set of relatively simple rules, one could plug these pieces together and achieve communication, independent of where the pieces of hardware or software originated from. This, in many cases, permitted the Internet to invade spaces of previously existing equipment—growing quickly from being a “late add-on” into becoming the heart of the way enterprises operate in the beginning of the 21st century.

Many manufacturers and service providers have understood this message and gone for it with agility and enthusiasm—providing standards-based services that provide great benefit to the users of the Internet today. But that they will continue to do so is not completely obvious.