When in doubt, disclose

Tuesday, February 27, 2007 by Dave Winer.

Interesting piece by Tim O'Reilly where he talks about a new set of products from Adobe. He also says they're presenting at his upcoming ETech conference.  

O'Reilly is a board member at Adobe and presumably has an interest in the success of these products. 

It's important to disclose conflicts, so the reader knows when they're reading a biased or interested opinion.  

Mike Arrington, who invests in companies, often gets heat even though he carefully discloses when he has an interest in a company he's writing about.  

I don't invest as often as either Tim or Mike, but when I write about a company I have an interest in, if there's any doubt whether it's clear, I disclose. 

Update #1: Dan Rabin says that O'Reilly was on the board at Macromedia, which merged with Adobe, and he is not currently on the board of Adobe.