Good article. This is probably my main problem with the IT sphere and especially startups right now. It's definitely part of why I left my last job working as a contractor.

"Back in my day", if you had an issue with an open source project, you didn't "fork it" and ask questions later: you joined the mailing list or IRC channel, talked over what you were trying to contribute, and got into a discussion about whether it was or was not a good idea and how to go about getting it integrated.

Now-a-days, it seems like "competition" at all levels of scale is the new status quo: people find a bug in a program (I've personally had this happen with WinterBoard and Substrate's Safe Mode), and they don't even report it... they fix it for themselves, release a new binary, and use their "competitive advantage" to get people to switch :/.

I had never actually thought about this, but it's true. The culture these days is all about usurping one another and being "better", not really about community or building something. Shameful, really.

Edit: Here's a little story I have that I thought would be relevant: a long time ago I remember there was a certain text editor on OS X I really liked using. There was a nasty bug in it I found - not that it was anything serious, it was just annoying to me. I emailed the developer about it (if I remember right, he was the only one working on it) and he later ended up thanking me for the catch and fixing it later on my suggestion. It felt really good! I very much enjoyed that I was able to directly help make one of the programs I liked even better. There was nothing commercial or competitive about it. Talking with some of my colleagues over the years, I can't help but think everyone else would be jumping at the opportunity to fork off (it was not open source, but that's beside the point) and make their own editor for everyone to switch over to with said problem fixed and more - picture a businessman-like voice pitching that one - like Saurik says. That doesn't really sit well with me.