Chris Snook wrote:
Collaborating with the competition ("coopetition") on a common
technology platform reduces costs for anyone who chooses to get
involved, giving them a collective competitive edge against anyone who
doesn't. This is why there is so much industry interest in F/OSS, and
mortal enemies in the business world happily work together on technical
issues in Linux.
[...]
Your competitors who do participate in the community (and there are a
lot in the embedded space) enjoy reduced development costs, more stable
and better-reviewed code, continuous compatibility with the latest
versions, and influence in the community over the direction of future
development. If you want to cede this advantage to your competitors,
that's between you and your investors.
I definitely agree that the above is an accurate assessment.
There is a flip side too. For hardware vendors, there is an interesting
dynamic of cooperation /and/ competition. Hardware vendors still
compete based on features, IP, and many other levels.
A hardware vendor that is unaware of how to compete in an open source
world is a hardware vendor with a big fat hole in their business model.
It isn't usually politically correct to state this out loud, but,
hardware vendors still compete quite heavily using "closed" intellectual
property. With open source, the lines just shift.
Jeff
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