competition is good?

competition is good?

Posted Apr 5, 2007 16:24 UTC (Thu) by hazelsct (subscriber, #3659)
In reply to: competition is good? by dion
Parent article: Linux and flash

Here's another analogy as a counterargument to your Nokia groups. IBM created three teams to work on copper metallization. One tried chemical vapor deposition, another physical vapor deposition, and the third electrochemistry. They all did great work, but electrochemistry was able to do things the others couldn't (like superconformal filling), and won out in the end. The result is an enormous win for IBM: now *everybody* has to license their patents in this area.

The moral: internal competition within a company, or community, can be a good thing, even when it divides resources. It's hard to tell early on which project's approach is better, or they both may have merits which will appeal to different end users or applications (like GNOME/KDE).

---

(Log in to post comments)