The value of transparency in business
I assume that it’s fine for me
to find out, for instance, why
my bank charges are what they
are... and if it’s concealed from
me then I will suspect that there
is malpractice afoot.
bw» how do you see the trends in transparency This move towards payment at the point of value is the
evolving over the next three to five years? key trend we’re going to see over the next decade.
sP» I think transparency will become characteristic bw» Is there a fraud risk if banks were to start
of the way I deal with businesses. I can already see it making their programs public?
happening in government here in the UK. One of my
favourite websites is called ’theyworkforyou.com’
1
. I can sP» If you talk to security experts like Bruce Schneier
2

subscribe to my Member of Parliament and get emails or Whitfield Diffie
3
you’ll hear them saying that security
telling me what he says in the House of Commons. through obscurity is false security. Keeping your source
code secret simply means that the only people who can
Over the next three to five years we will expect more work out how it can be exploited are either the ‘black hat
openness and transparency which will guide consumers hackers’ or the people who wrote the software.
in selecting who they want to do business with.
Increasingly I will want to deal with companies that Companies adopting Open Source have all other
respect my privacy and promote transparency in the experts who are also able to inspect the source code,
way that they conduct their business. find defects in it and either fix them or report them.
Paradoxically, it turns out that by making your source
bw» your job is chief open source officer at sun code public you end up with more secure rather than
Microsystems. we had an article on open source less secure systems because you’re much more likely to
in one of our previous editions of Perspectives find defects and have them resolved by people who are
that generated some debate. can there really be a not of bad intent.
commercial business model that’s all about giving
software away for nothing? If you decide to use proprietary software and base all of
your security on obscurity then I guarantee you that the
sP» Open Source refers to the unrestricted right to only people who will find defects will be people with time on
use the software. People sometimes assume that there’s their hands and bad intentions – the ‘black hat hackers’.
no money to be made from Open Source software as you
do not make money by selling licences. bw» simon, which companies do you think are
responding particularly well to the trend towards
In reality, when businesses adopt Open Source software transparency?
and it starts to deliver value for the company, the users
of the software typically need warranties, training, bug sP» One of my favourite examples is a micro
fixes, updates and tuning tools. All of those things can blogging service called Twitter
4
which is like sending
be supplied for a fee – so Open Source is not about SMS messages to a list of subscribers. I’ve found that
getting free software, it’s about paying for the software at companies are increasingly monitoring what’s being said
the point of value rather than at the point of acquisition. about them on Twitter.
Perspectives on the future | 15
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