In one of my mailing lists somebody brought this one liner to our attention: “We want patriots, not mercenaries.”

The topic was outsource your firm’s IT operations. That really helped me crystalize something. IT is so central to productivity and positioning in the modern firm that there is something quite odd about letting control of it slip into the hands of vendors.

One of the reasons open source can work is because it substitutes an alienated cash/contractual relationship for a richer collaborative one. This enhances the chances you don’t loose control of such a key component of the modern firm.

That, by the way, was the royal we so common inPR personality puff peices.