Chinese food == Linux ?

The TED conference is always a fascinating mish-mash of stuff. I've stumbled across a rather interesting presentation by NYT reporter Jennifer 8. Lee on the TED site (apparently recorded at Mondavi's TASTE3 conference, which I must learn more about). She discusses the spread of Chinese food across the U.S. and across the world, noting how vastly it has mutated but also how successful recipes or concepts spread almost virally although she doesn't use that word. Instead, she proposes that Chinese food is analogous to Linux and open software versus McDonald's Microsoft: