For those of you unfamiliar with the term... Meritocracy.
Coté from Redmonk quoted the title of this entry in episode 14 of Redmonk Radio. Again, it's another quote that was like an "Oh yeah" moment for me. In companies where you produce software (usually) the project timeline or budget is king. In the open source movement, the best ideas take as long to get implemented as needed - there is no overriding time line that says you must ship that feature by this date. Also, in distributed projects there can be healthy debate about the best way to implement things - the ideas and implementations with the best merit win.
I'm slowly catching up on these podcasts - making time on the train to listen is really working out for me.