While I have nothing against collaboration, there is a place for "competition" if you by competition mean "independently confirmed results". In the specific ca

While I have nothing against collaboration, there is a place for "competition" if you by competition mean "independently confirmed results". In the specific case I'm most familiar with, there are several research groups making software that does the same thing (n-body simulations, hydrodynamics, radiation transfer) and it is a massive duplicated effort. However, I don't think it's necessarily wasted. In my mind, having everyone collaborate on one code would vastly increase the risk of results being incorrect due to bugs or simply unjustified approximations. When several independent groups perform the same calculation, with different pieces of software using different approximation methods, you can have more faith in that the result is correct. It's the fact that the academic "system" values being the first to publish a result that pushes everyone towards a competition at all costs approach, but that's only one of the things about incentives for scientists that can be criticized. I spent my PhD thesis writing a piece of software that I then released under the GPL. It's possible I could get more papers by close-sourcing it and only working with people that would collaborate with me, but I made the calculated gamble that giving the community a free tool in the end would boost my recognition faster due to a wider adoption and more citations.