One thesis is that using other peoples ideas increases the rate of new technology. Another is that being forced to invent your own would. The example of the T

One thesis is that using other peoples ideas increases the rate of new technology. Another is that being forced to invent your own would. The example of the Tasmanians, who were forced to invent their own stuff not only did not progress technologically, they went backward. So the article supports the idea that if google could just copy the iPhone and add something we would have progress. But if they just re-invent it badly we have regression. As for Linux distos, I would argue that they have out innovated windows in many ways, such as 'apt-get', and knoppix. There are many efforts to replace MySQL, such as CouchDB, Cassandra and MongoDB. Besides MySQL actually works pretty well, its just that SQL apologists try to pretend that other SQL database are significantly different.