Improvement can often be a slap in the face... (Score 1)

I find it an interesting thought that the statement from the article quoted, "while imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, improvement can often be a slap in the face" is true for two competing hardware companies, the same could never really be said of contributions to open source software. You don't generally see too much complaint about open source developers using and building upon existing projects, or even outright borrowing the best features of competing projects (e.g. Gnome/KDE, Linux/BSDs).