"Right. But the fact that one has to become a member of the group means that it'...

"Right. But the fact that one has to become a member of the group means that it's not an open protocol."

What?

There are plenty of open protocols produced by membership based groups.

I believe you have redefined open to also include some notion of governance, which, while popular, was never the case previously :)

If you want to define what you mean by open protocol, that would be helpful, since everyone seems to have a different definition nowadays ...