Trust people, not corporations

Posted Oct 14, 2006 16:25 UTC (Sat) by kevinbsmith (guest, #4778)
In reply to: Trust people, not corporations by bignose
Parent article: Good-bye Mr. Noorda (Linux-Watch)

Actually, Free Software doesn't rely on trust in people, as explained by Linus: "Because if we are shown to not be trustworthy, somebody else can always replace us--so you don't have to be able to trust us." (http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?ar...)

And the idea of trusting people, not corporations doesn't really work either, as people run companies. Bitkeeper comes to mind immediately.

Don't trust corporations. And don't put too much trust in people...make sure you have anything you care about in writing. Just because someone lets you "get away with something" today doesn't mean they will do so tomorrow.

Trust people, not corporations

Posted Oct 17, 2006 4:37 UTC (Tue) by bignose (subscriber, #40) [Link]

> And the idea of trusting people, not corporations doesn't really work
> either, as people run companies.

People have a much higher investment in having people continuing to trust them than do corporations; hence, a person's past good actions can be a reliable indicator of future good actions -- at least, far more so than a corporation.

> Don't trust corporations. And don't put too much trust in people

Yes. Perhaps I should have been saying that free software, to be effectively free, needs to be insulated as well as possible from the whims of any entity, real (person) or imaginary (corporation), so that the ideal in Linus's statement can hold true.