Re: fingerprint of the archive signing key
On Tue, Jun 29, 2004 at 01:01:24PM -0500, John Hasler wrote:
> Brian Nelson writes:
> > What motivation does a company have to be trustworthy?
>
> What motivation does any group of people have to be trustworthy?
>
> > The /appearance/ of trustworthiness may matter since in this case, it
> > would affect the bottom line. However, any company would do something
> > dodgy to make an extra buck as long as its outward appearance was not
> > affected.
>
> A company isn't some sort of evil magic entity. It's just a group of
> people.
Whose composition changes over time.
A company is an entity in it's own right. Would you trust someone (let's
call him Bob), who had no innate sense of morality, but was totally under
the control of someone else? You might, if you trusted the controlling
person. But then it's trust-by-proxy. Would you continue to trust Bob if
he was then controlled by someone else entirely, about whom you had to
reliable trust metric? I'd hope not.
In the same way, you can only trust a company as long as you trust it's
controlling individuals. When control changes, you must base your trust in
the company on the trust in those individuals.
You're trusting the people, not the company. There is only one goal of a
company, as such -- to maximise the profit of it's shareholders. Everything
else (including interpreting the company's goal) is in the hands of the
people who run the company.
- Matt
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