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RStudio becomes a public benefit corporation
- hyperenergy 7y agoIt's interesting that many tech/product blogs do not easily link back to the parent site. For instance, I didn't know what RStudio was, so I have to go to the address bar and remove the blog portion of the subdomain and the trailing url just to find out what the parent site is, instead of a simple link.
- hadley 7y agoDoh - I filed an issue on our internal tracker to fix this
- standyro 7y agoI admire your speed at filing issues! Especially in the tidyverse workshop yesterday.
- mattl 7y agoBlog footer also says RStudio, Inc and has 2019 copyright.
- brewdad 7y agoThanks for the quick response to this. The "blog that doesn't link back to the main site" might be my biggest pet peeve on the internet today. "Pet peeve" being a minor but incredibly annoying issue as opposed to a deal-breaker type of issue.
- zojirushibottle 7y agoit's in the sidebar...
- silicon2401 7y agoIt's in the side bar, at the bottom. I agree with the original comment. That's quite poor design. Unless I'm seriously interested, I don't waste time looking at sidebars, let alone the bottoms of them
- zymhan 7y agoThat really does annoy me, so often I'll be on blog or support site, and there is no way to get back to the main web page for the service/company.
- bochoh 7y agoLooking at you Microsoft Partner center docs... just give me the dashboard!
- miahi 7y agoI first thought it's about R-Studio[1] the recovery software. Then I tried the main page and I had doubts. Only after I hovered over the "Products" it says "RStudio - The premier IDE for R" (ok, it also says something in the page title but that's not fully shown in any current browser, and there's a "RStudio Server Pro - Take control of your R code" on the first page, but I did not make the connection) [1] https://www.r-studio.com/ https://www.r-studio.com/
- Ericson2314 7y agoI would have more faith in the concept of "public benefit corporations" if it meant that e.g. Kickerstarter was prevented by its charter from suppressing the self-organizing of its workers.
- chadlavi 7y agoWelcome to the club!
- amrrs 7y ago@hadley Your response to the tidyverse question was quite candid. Thanks for that! Hopefully Rstudio becoming PBC helps a lot of skeptists to support more!
- j88439h84 7y agoWhere is that?
- amrrs 7y agoRstudio conference Keynote Q&A
- data_ders 7y agoCTRL+F for hadley. He's all over that thread. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20362626 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20362626
- minimaxir 7y agoHuh, that's my thread; didn't realize Hadley had commented on it. (also that thread is a reminder why I don't talk about tidyverse on HN anymore)
- peatmoss 7y agoWow, I’d missed that thread previously. I learned R before the Tidyverse and even before ggplot. I cannot imagine going back to base R. If I have one regret about the Tidyverse, it’s that Hadley and company don’t have a clone using Racket / Scheme as their tapestry. R got me into FP, but I feel like Racket is a more natural place for the ideas of the tidyverse.
- omarhaneef 7y agoI wonder what this means. I have benefited a lot from R, Rstudio. But what impact does this have? Are there legal remedies now available to users if they feel Rstudio has strayed from the charter? fwiw, I have the impression that the team there is quite civic minded, so this is really a question about the law, and not some sort of implication about their motivation.
- larrydag 7y agoMy belief is that instead of being shareholder focus that RStudio, Inc. is going to be customer and end-user focused. I'm not sure how this is held accountable. I suppose in the near term it would be a public relations form of accountability. I suppose in the future there could be some other forms of accountability such as licensure of software. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benefit_corporation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benefit_corporation
- omarhaneef 7y agoDon't all entities-- public benefit corporations or otherwise -- experience "public relations form of accountability"?
- larrydag 7y agoYes of course. Yet usually it's focused on their product or service and profitability. I'm guessing since a public benefit corporation would have a different focus that is more end-user facing.
- simmanian 7y agoCan someone explain to me how PBCs are structurally different than "regular" for-profit corporations? What's stopping them from turning "evil?"
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- kube-system 7y agoTraditional corporations in the US are legally required to maximize shareholder profit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Co https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Co. A PBC is allowed (but not required) to make decisions that benefit the public but might not be beneficial for shareholders.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- skybrian 7y agoThat's only true if by "maximize" you don't mean anything like the mathematical maximization of a function. Due to the "business judgement" rule, the management of a for-profit company gets to do business just about any way they want without any legal constraint; all they need is some reasonable rationale for why it might somehow, in the long term, benefit shareholders. This includes giving stuff away and selling stuff for a loss, as many unicorns do. It includes paying employees very well, as some companies do. It includes making donations to charity. It includes either sticking to their original business, or deciding to spend a lot of money breaking into a new business. In practice, shareholder primacy happens less because of what's legally required and more because many companies have management and employees who are shareholders. If the company stock goes up, the employees do well, and this promotes a culture where people try to make the stock go up.
- kube-system 7y agoFor daily business, sure, a lot of public benefit can be justified monetarily. Of course, there are exceptions, and a PBC would be allowed greater ability to choose. As I understand, another big benefit is the ability to use public benefit as a protection from hostile takeovers from companies that might undermine the PBC's social mission.
- halfeatenpie 7y agoExcited about this!
- newfeatureok 7y agoIt's great that RStudio is changing to a PBC. However from what I've read, being a Benefit Corporation doesn't actually mean anything. - From my reading it's possible for a Benefit Corporation to still be taken over or bought out. - Benefit Corporations can convert back to regular corporations (in contrast with most 501(c)3's which cannot convert to corporations except under very particular circumstances) - Unlike a 501(c)3, the charter of a Benefit Corporation is not legally binding It's not to say that being a Benefit Corporation is bad (or good), but rather to say that it's kind of meaningless. I believe people should judge a for profit company, which a Benefit Corporation is, by its leadership, not necessarily by its legal designation. Fortunately the leadership at RStudio have made themselves trustworthy, at least by the fact that they're relatively transparent and most of their stuff is open source. I'd be curious to know why they just didn't become a non-profit. I assume the main reason is because they want to be able to raise capital more easily. Source: https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2012/05/13/benefit-corporations-vs-regular-corporations-a-harmful-dichotomy https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2012/05/13/benefit-corporati...
- scottmmjackson 7y agoDisclaimer: I'm an RStudio employee. But this post is my personal opinion and not representative of that of RStudio. Separately, I'm also a licensed (non-practicing) attorney; despite that, this isn't legal advice. Some of the things you've said are correct, but are kind of skipping a few important steps. Buyout: Any corporate buyout, particularly of a Delaware corporation, opens the board up to scrutiny and requires the consent of the corporate constituency. In JJ's presentation he cited Revlon which is an example of a dispute over a buyout by a major shareholder. So, yes, technically benefit corporations can be bought out, but they must approve of the buyout using the corporate governance rules of a benefit corporation. Converting to a benefit corporation isn't easy- you pretty much require unanimous shareholder consent and it's fairly close to the amount of consensus you need to convert to a pure nonprofit. Same with converting back to an "any lawful business purpose" corporation. So again, yes it's possible, but it's very unlikely unless something convinces basically everyone with a stake that it's worthwhile. I'm not sure where you're getting that PBC status is not legally binding- I didn't see anything like that in the Harvard link. Corporate purpose statements have a very real legal effect. Would you mind explaining more about this statement? I want to make sure I'm not mistaken. Note that the article you cite was written a year before the Delaware Benefit Corporation Law was signed by the governor- so some of the things it says might be a little speculative based on the legal realities at the time. If you want to learn more in depth, I can recommend "Benefit Corporation Law & Governance" by Frederick Alexander.
- m_c_g 7y agoMy head is spinning. I am certain I heard about this weeks ago. I don't think it was through a backchannel or a rumor mill—I thought I had read something official about it. In fact, I've spoken to people several times about it, most recently yesterday. And when they expressed surprise, I went looking for the official announcement, and I couldn't find one. Is it possible that RStudio Inc. made a soft announcement that they later pulled for re-tooling? Or perhaps my memory is faulty and I did just hear about it through a back channel. Obviously this is something that takes time to plan and execute so it has been in the works for awhile.
- trestletech 7y agoThe legal change happened last year but it had been kept under wraps until today. Employees did know in advance, so it could have leaked.
- VectorLock 7y agoDoes this mean you can get a RStudio Pro license for less than $10g a year? Also their sales department might be one of the worst I ever dealt with, so hopefully they'll all get fired.
- jacobwilliamroy 7y agoI think it'd be cheaper to ask the people you spoke with to learn some new communication skills, instead of firing and hiring an entire department. Like, whoa dude. That's waaaay too much paperwork
- VectorLock 7y agoAsking them to learn some new communication skills would require them to be able to be communicated with at all.
- jacobwilliamroy 7y agoWhat is a public benefit corporation legally? What kind of tax forms do they fill out?
- jawns 7y agoPublic benefit corporations sounds nice -- at least on paper. But ultimately, PBCs still tend to have a bunch of outside shareholders who are expecting to make a profit eventually. What I'd really love to see is more organizations considering a cooperative structure. Cooperatives are 100% owned by their members (in the case of consumer cooperatives) or workers (in the case of worker-owned cooperatives). There are no outside shareholders, and so the pursuit of profit is not the ultimate goal; the happiness of the owners is. That certainly doesn't preclude making a healthy profit, but it does preclude short-sighted moves that eek out a temporary profit at the expense of the broader business. Most people don't realize how widespread cooperatives already are. Every single credit union in the United States is a cooperative. Many insurance companies are cooperatives. The ShopRite chain of grocery stores and REI outdoor stores use a cooperative structure. Of course, the downside is raising capital. But sometimes taking on debt is enough, and cooperatives can flourish in a variety of industries.
- toomuchtodo 7y agoTo add to your examples, Publix is one of the largest employee owned grocery stores in the US, and Vanguard is the largest mutual brokerage owned by its investor customers. It can be done!
- H8crilA 7y agoIs the AGPL going away? Under some interpretations - data generated in RStudio poisons whatever software project is using it, like GPL does with dependant code.
- jmcphers 7y agoNo, RStudio will remain AGPL licensed.
- qchris 7y agoIt's interesting to see an organization like RStudio decide to change their status to a public benefit corporation, plus go through the process of becoming a certified B Corp. The nature of a PBC, in having more latitude to consider actions that don't necessarily build shareholder value as their primary concern, certainly seems to line up well with its open-source roots. I've tended to associate PBCs with companies like Patagonia, Ben and Jerry's, etc.--ones that make physical things, rather make software (which seems more like intellectual property, to a degree? Mostly relevant in terms of material cost of reproduction). I'm curious to see what kind of impact this will have on their operations and direction, and if it might lead to a similar trend with other open-source-based corporations like Gitlab or Elastic.
- ianbooker 7y agoI think this is also a very rational move. IDEs and tooling is just participial about actual performance of said software, but also about the culture and community it is embedded in. So going for a long term commitment to open source is a strong signal to users and other stakeholders. Bringing up Gitlab in this regard is a very good point, especially after MS bought Github..
- mikorym 7y agoIMO the main contribution of RStudio is not RStudio itself (the IDE) but their general support of the R language. I think that this dynamic scene where R is still an evolving language is the true value. I don't actually use RStudio itself (hurray for vim). Tidyverse is the obvious example of their contributions, but I don't mean just tidyverse (actually, there are some things that I don't like that much, like tibbles) [1]. I think a language like R really needs this kind of support due to its mantra: for statisticians, by statisticians. By that I mean that you should be able to get insights by sometimes only writing a handful of lines of code. The ease of use of R, good libraries, nice graphs, and so forth is why I happily code in both R and Python. [1] It seems like here is another thread about some objections to tidyverse: https://github.com/matloff/TidyverseSkeptic https://github.com/matloff/TidyverseSkeptic.