I was once at an audio manufacturer that will be coming up on the 100th anniversary in a few years. I distinctly remember the presentation given to all of us wh

I was once at an audio manufacturer that will be coming up on the 100th anniversary in a few years. I distinctly remember the presentation given to all of us where it was hammered home that the company was optimized for preserving and expanding the brand. For example, they would avoid changing materials/tooling for their products that have been manufactured for decades without rigorous testing that showed it improved the product or unless supply chain issues out of their control forced them to (which my understanding was rare, because they engineered their supply chain to avoid it). Some of this is pragmatic. It takes a century to build a brand and a day to kill it. And in that industry, brand loyalty is as important as specs. But much more of it is genuine care for their products and customers - they hired people who gave a shit, and the culture wasn't one where a penny pinching decision that harmed quality would have been made, let alone tolerated. My point is this - a brand with "trust" as a core value isn't derived just from transparency, sharing code, auditing and communication. It's built by the people that work on those products, sell them, and make decisions about the product roadmap. Much the way that software architecture reflects organizational architecture, brand value reflects culture and values of the people that work on it.