Luke Kanies, the author of Puppet, blogs about Chef. I’m impressed by that because Chef is a direct competitor to Puppet. (CFEngine is another, older, product that could be placed in the category with Puppet and Chef. Namely: declarative, recipe-based server configuration systems.)
Gone are the days when speaking the name of your competition was a marketing taboo. Luke argues that the arrival of Chef as a competitor may actually be a boost to Puppet. I agree: learning about Chef has established the purpose of both of the tools in my mind, which in turn grants Puppet more mindshare than it previously had.
Yep, there’s a word for that: positioning.