In the book world, we are told to read and read widely (but generally just the good stuff, right?). We need to know who is writing books in our genre, who the best sellers are in our genre, and what style the books have. We are basically told to do market research on our competitors. We enjoy reading books, so this isn’t a chore. It’s fun. So many of us have read from the classics, the masters, and huge bombs, that we can quote and commiserate in groups. This is somewhere between competitive, appreciative and a team effort.
In the technology world, the exact opposite is done (and I theorize poorly). Competitors are looked at or discussed in only the most general and non-technical feature sets. Even if the competitors’ products are freely available in the market place, shhhh, we don’t talk about them unless we have to. Market research is meant to find your clients, not compare your rivals. Sure, there’s the open source initiatives but the serious players don’t want to just give away their work or let anyone else see it. Companies, journalists, researchers third party to the whole industry compare the products for speed, performance, functionality and tell the consumer who rocks and who sucks. It probably has something to do with the End User License Agreement (EULA). But this isn’t helping the end consumer or the market place.
These two different approaches could be boiled down to artists (writers) and scientists (computer tech heads). Artists have always been somewhat congenial and friendly (except for the stray deadly rivalry) and scientists have always horded their theories and findings until they absolutely can’t be stolen or disproved.
You might argue that the dollars involved in each are on totally different economies of scale. True, I won’t argue the money to be made in technology even at the most elementary levels vastly outpaced any comparative artistic endeavor. And stories have been along much longer so the maturation of the book market is there (even if it is imploding). Technology is a modern vocation and hasn’t matured to the friendly territories.
But what if the technology folks said, “Screw the EULA” (or the patent, or whatever other legal issue comes down the line) and included the best ideas (in their own code) and avoided any pitfalls found in competitors’ products?
I surmise better products would be made, purchased and enjoyed. Can’t we all get along?