Over at my Open Source blog at ZDNet I have long tracked the changing business ethics, and practices, brought about by the open source movement.
This is summed up in a post from today, Open source doesn't forget, and this money quote:
Trust is needed to build a community, to draw contributions, and to gain commitments for enterprise installations. It’s as important as capital, certainly more important than marketing.
This is changing the rules of the software business. Which in turn is changing the rules of the hardware business, and the device business.
While it's still true that some companies have the power to drive the media toward their spin, just as the White House does, what gets hurt in the end is the media's credibility. Open source advocates don't buy what Microsoft says. Polls show the people don't buy the White House spin, either.
A lot of business behavior is changing in response to this, slowly, and
from the bottom up. Ethical behavior is seen as an opportunity.
Open source companies learn that lies cause problems, and avoid them. Larger companies come to understand that the search for open source credibility takes more than spin. They still spin, but when they match actions to their spin they start to succeed. (See the poll results at the bottom of this post.)
Thus, Internet politics has already begun to transform business. Not all industries. The telecomm industry, with its deep pockets and huge pay-offs to politicians, seems for now immune to the demand for change. But the institutional memory created by the Internet is slowly forcing transparency, openness and common sense on more-and-more businesses.
This is bound to have a political effect. And it is having a political effect. Those who live solely by spin are dying by spin. Those who accept being measured by actions are gaining.
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