Imagine a simple market (if you're wincing already, I'm right there with you, but you asked for this right?). There are 100 customers, and two products. The products are interchangeable, save for the performance of their bloom filters.

This is a zero sum game from the perspective of the two companies providing the products.

Thanks for responding. I'm afraid my question was unclear. This was supposed to be an answer to how could contributing to an open source project be a zero sum game? You did not define what the open source project was and or the companies rationales fopr consoidering contributions to be zero-sum or otherwise.

If we further assume that the two companies who produce the two products only produce those products, then for those two companies it's zero sum for them to contribute in good faith to open source bloom filters. Any gain that one company gets in the quality of their bloom filter is likely to translate directly into fewer customers for the other.

It isn't globally zero-sum, notably the users of these companies' products are presumably better off, as are other software projects and their users who might benefit from any improvements made to open source bloom filters.

Why are you asking someone who said "contributing to OSS is a non-zero-sum game" that?

The parent said:

"Contributing to OSS is a non-zero-sum game and the sooner companies realize this, the better."

So I am asking him how could companies possibly think that contributing to OSS is a zero sum game? Its either zero sum or it is not. If they need to realize its non-zero-sum they would have to be under the impression that it was a zero-sum game.

I hope that cleared up my question. I'm sorry if my intentions were opaque, that was not my intention.

The default assumption ascribed to enterprise is that they don't want to contribute to open source because there is no "return" on such an investment. It is a zero-sum mentality which says "I am worse off for having shared my technology".

This may actually be the case in many situations, and where it's not, the possibility of outside contributions subsequently improving the technology is often overlooked.

Thank you for responding. One of the things I hate about HN is that discussions sometimes fall of the cliff as soon as a story leaves the front page.

I think I was getting hung up on how the contribution would harm the contributor and overlooking the "no return on investment" mindset.