Disclaimers and Bias

This blog is primarily written by Bob Gourley with a few other guest writers as invited.  Since this is a personal blog my most important point regarding bias is that you should evaluate everything written here yourself.  I’m hoping the things here are of interest and use but please use your own judgment.

One key bias comes from years in the US national security community.  I hope everything I do is supportive of national security.  Another bias is to look at things from a lens of enterprise technology.  I was an enterprise CTO and now I study them.

I also have a general bias towards open source software.  I believe strongly in protection of intellectual property and I know proprietary code and its protection is also critically important in moving us all forward, but so frequently the open source community is under represented so I want to try hard to make sure they are given a fair shake.  I’m hoping I’m managing my own bias on open source but like I’ve already said, try to use your own judgment on things I write.

I do not let companies pay me to write blog entries.  However, since this is a personal blog I reserve the right to write about anything I’m doing and I have to admit a bias towards companies and capabilities my business serves.  When I do that I’ll try to note my relationship in the article.  An example of that is Triumfant.  I am on their technology advisory board and have written some about their capability here.

For more on FTC rules see this post: FTC has issued guidelines.

My consultancy is Crucial Point LLC.  The team there serves several IT companies, some big and some small.   And we also serve other companies that serve portfolios of IT companies, which complicates and clouds who we might be serving at any one time.  If you are really interested in which companies I’m serving please ask and I’ll sort that out for you.  But in general we seek out high tech firms that offer capabilities that can dramatically improve the ability of federal enterprises to accomplish their mission.  Although we have worked for very large companies, we frequently work with new underdogs who we think will grow to dramatically change things in a very positive way (for example, see the list of firms in the Carahsoft portfolio).   I find it interesting to note that although I am a huge believer in commercially supported open source, most of these small companies exist because they invested tremendous amounts of creative talent and treasure into building capability that must be protected using proprietary licensing.

I guess all the above is just another reason for me to underscore, this is a personal blog, my twitter feed is a personal twitter feed, my facebook page is a personal page, and the most important point you should remember is that although I believe what I write, you should think through your own conclusions about everything.