Ethos
Despite the flurry of IPOs in the 90's, the e-commerce feeding-frenzy and subsequent dotcom implosion we like to keep reminding ourselves of one vital fact about the Internet:
The Internet has grown in spite of commerce and competition. The internet is a massive collaborative and co-operative effort. While many technologies play an important part in making the Internet work, it is a set of agreements that caused it happen in the first place. If you're not a part of that effort to make it better and more useful, you're in the wrong place.
Those of us who are directly involved in building the net have a responsibility to maintain and improve it.
If we're going to build online stores our priority is to make sure that they're not adding to the infuriating tangle of aggressively-hyped, badly-designed junk that wastes people's time by making promises that are temporarily out of stock.
We will not build sites that irritate, obfuscate, confuse, mislead or misinform.
We will not work with, or for, companies involved in patenting, copyrighting or otherwise restricting the public's right to freely use the core concepts and technologies of the Internet.
We will not work with companies intent on confining data to deliberately restricted proprietary formats.
We will not work with companies who do not respect security and privacy of other people's data.
'Nuff said ;)