The transparency can help to reduce costs, as things like negative results are shared, along with some of the infrastructure each company is building independen

The transparency can help to reduce costs, as things like negative results are shared, along with some of the infrastructure each company is building independently that isn't particularly exciting and could be shared without losing their competitive edge. Why should each company invest in their own data processing, visualization, search and modeling packages when much of that is not overly unique? Why not build a common base, and then customize the pieces that make sense? Sharing of clinical trial data, rather than repeating similar clinical trials? These are opportunities, but they certainly are not without risk. RDKit is one great example of an open-source toolkit developed primarily at a large pharma company for example.