So, that messiness was at the "platform level" of Digital Manufacturing Commons.
Other fault lines emerged at the "app level".
Siemens, PTC and Microsoft were also founding members or top-tier members of the MxD institute and they had proprietary "apps" of their own to sell to small manufacturers - an untapped, lucrative market in their minds.
Why would Microsoft support the creation of, say, an open-source Manufacturing Resource Planning (MRP) app that would compete with their product?