Not really, when you consider that the vast majority of will take the path of least resistance, and that innovation is often a risky and expensive effort most would rather eschew.<p>There are many examples of innovation-by-forced-workaround happening. Consider the fact that development of Ogg Vorbis languished until the MP3 patents started getting licensed (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Vorbis" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Vorbis</a>). This kicked the Ogg Vorbis project into overdrive, resulting in a format and codec that many consider superior to MP3.<p>Here&#x27;s another example, from Stallman himself: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gnu.org&#x2F;philosophy&#x2F;stallman-mec-india.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gnu.org&#x2F;philosophy&#x2F;stallman-mec-india.html</a> - he recounts an example of where they had to work around the LZW patents, resulting in GZIP, which &quot;gave better compression results&quot;. This further eventually led to the creation of PNG when the GIF patent was asserted. The clear implication, of course, is that they&#x27;d have preferred re-using LZW (as all good coders should), but then they would not have invented GZIP and PNG.