What will really kill the proprietary data silos is that somebody will figure out an architectural solution or a type of program or whatever, something that spreads wildly that actually depends on free data and open data. And that free and open data architecture - that takes over the world unexpectedly because it works, because it matters, because it enables new things - is what will undermine the proprietary data silos not the fact that we've tried to legislate it.

That certainly rings true to me.

A couple of days later I read Chris Saad's The Data Portability Landscape — An Update which has the following brilliant (if optimistic) quote:

Closed platforms are like ice cubes in a glass of water. They will float for a while. They will change the temperature of the liquid beneath. Ultimately, however, the ice cube must eventually melt into the wider web.

Putting the two together makes me think that whereas it might be tempting to view the success of a proprietary solution like Facebook Connect as a failure of the open data portability movement, it's also possible to see it as a driver for more open development.