Sam, you have brought up a very interesting topic.
From Merriam-Webster
Quote:
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Compete: to strive consciously or unconsciously for an objective (as position, profit, or a prize) : be in a state of rivalry
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IMO, I do not believe competition always yields a net gain of 0. Look at almost any competitive industry. They are competing for the same market, and also to gain superiority over the competitors. Let me use an example my engineering professor uses very often (because of his 40+ years of experience).
The semiconductor industry is extremely competitive. Each time a competitor releases a new product with a certain attribute or ability my professors company was among the first to buy it off them to see how it works. They reverse-engineered the product and later released a product with some similar attributes and also some added ones. The same happened vice versa many times over.
These companies were constantly leapfrogging themselves, creating better and better products.
Does any of this sound familiar at all? We are competing, but we allow each other to see our advances and learn from them (and often use them).
But maybe what we here in the FRC do is technically not competition.
If that is so, why don't we come up with our own name for it, or maybe that name already exists. Would Gracious Professionalism describe what FRC does rather than competition? It seems a bit awkward to be. Maybe we can adopt something else...