>>There was even a term for that, that eludes me at the moment, which described the idea of "I share my specs today with you, you'll share your specs tomorrow with me".
Andrew "bunnie" Huang coined the term gongkai to explain this concept, as differentiated from the Western-originated idea of open source (kaiyuan)[1]. It was based entirely on his observations of the semi-open hacking culture that is hopefully still flourishing in Shenzhen.[2]