Allison Randal of Hewlett-Packard began her keynote for OSCON 2015 with a quotation I’d never heard: “I think many people assume, wrongly, that a company exists simply to make money.
While this is an important result of a company’s existence, we have to go deeper and find the real reasons for our being. As we investigate this, we inevitably come to the conclusion that a group of people get together and exist as an institution that we call a company so they are able to accomplish something collectively which they could not accomplish separately. They are able to do something worthwhile???they make a contribution to society (a phrase which sounds trite but is fundamental).”