Matias Bjørling was only 28 when he developed the initial Open Channel SSD architecture (for solid-state drives), pushing for what he called “the necessary death of a block device interface.” He argued that the conventional block interface, which arbitrarily reads and writes to SSD data blocks, had a major impact on the throughput, latency and lifetime of SSDs. Promoting the Open-Channel effort, he gained support from industry heavy hitters and many others who rapidly adopted the interface and its specs, but eventually, Bjørling changed course. Open Channel’s early success became its downfall. Organizations readily adopted it, but because it was not standardized, each adopted it in slightly modified ways. The Open-Channel SSD drive specifications offered a versatile storage interface that enabled essential knobs to control latency, I/O predictability, and I/O isolation, but the diverse set of implementations could only solve the needs of a single or few users. Bjørling ultimately knew it had to be standardized to realize its true potential.