There’s a great quarterly magazine called “Make.” It’s about (wait for it) making things. A good read, if you’re into the DIY thing.
They’ve got a slogan for companies that are killing off software or hardware:
If you’re going to kill it, make it open.
You could apply this to Cisco, who killed the semi-popular Flip video cameras. Or to any small software company.
The classic example of this is Apple’s Newton handheld device. This was, in many ways, the iPhone before the iPhone was a thing. WAY before. It was ahead of it’s time, and Apple eventually killed the project. They never open-sourced it. But a vibrant community of hackers and makers have kept at it, and there are still Newtons running, now with WiFi, Bluetooth, and a myriad of other features that were never part of the device.
But think about it with education: A lesson that I’m maybe not going to use can be set free for other educators to use/modify/grow into a new and vibrant thing.