Don’t forget we don’t live in a pacifist utopia. Companies don’t work on the same ideas just because they think they can make it better.

Companies work on the same ideas because they want to own IP, data etc. and then charge money.

The other way around they work on the same ideas not to be charged by others and control their business.

“software industry” is not some big happy hippie family. Patent wars, browser wars, OS wars - well we get a lot of open source for free but that’s not the norm.