Once a startup is beyond the "critical mass" of users, it goes on to erect barriers to entry for new comers. But since it's a free market (sort of), competitors are equally welcome to get in and take their share of the pie. But having OpenSource build web apps (products) would actually blur the difference b/w a commercial entity and an open source project.

In a truly competitive market, at some stage government would step in and break monopolies. For instance, they would go to Ebay and say, "look, you need to pool all your auction listings with other online auction companies, so they have access to yours and you display theirs", forcing them to actually compete on price and service.

And wikipedia is a non-commercial web app. There isn't really a blurred line - either it is for the common good or it is for profit.

So you're arguing that once a startup is beyond a certain number of users (considered a success), it should share that with it's competitors because that would just be fair? I know it's a bit cold but it was because of the competitive nature of the market in the first place that the said startup was able to disrupt a space. Taxi companies have been in existence for way too long. Realtors & brokers have been around since humans started building houses. Startups disrupt existing spaces, creating new business models only to grow big and then get disrupted by another startup. No startup grows to be big and remain big for eternity.

But yes, there should be a check on the type of barriers these fast growing startups erect to discourage new startups from disrupting them.

You really think the government should force eBay to give their crown jewels to their competitors?

You know a company is made of people right?

Look, you can always foster competition in an industry. But I would personally stop short of enslaving people to produce a product for their competitors.

I'm not sure I follow. They are a commercial enterprise, and that's the revenue model for their product. How could someone charging a price for their product make you sick? Who is John Galt?

They use first-mover advantage to create long-lasting, high-margin monopolies with persisting returns completely out of proportion to the value they add.

In drug patents, the company gets 12 years to make revenue from its innovation.. why should ebay get an eternity?

High margins breed competition. Competition breeds innovation. Whoever is on the top of the hill at this moment is irrelevant.

If you think eBay has no competition, or there's no innovation happening in the auction space, well then you haven't even been reading the news!

eBay proved the market. That's a really big deal.