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I don't know about employee owned businesses funded by loans. But Mozilla (ignoring the foundation/corporation technicality) and Wikipedia, showed me how genera

I don't know about employee owned businesses funded by loans. But Mozilla (ignoring the foundation/corporation technicality) and Wikipedia, showed me how generally flawed these kinds of non profits are. They have some insane mismanagement of funds, which don't go where they are most needed, and where user want funds to go. Firefox's market share has dropped tremendously under Mitchell Baker. If it were a traditional company, she would have been fired ages ago (instead she has had her pay increased). The way they work they just have to convince their benefactor (Google) to keep giving them money. There are no investors that demand growth, so it's all just internal politics with no performance incentives. I could maybe understand it if at least, unlike most for profit business, Mozilla would actually be amazing with privacy and treating their users well. But they are barely better than Chrome. It's almost impossible to disable and keep disabled all telemetry. They've pushed things like Pocket, a Mr Robot plugin into users, and so much bullshit.

unity1001 4y ago
> They have some insane mismanagement of funds, which don't go where they are most needed, and where user want funds to go How is that any different from 'efficient' private companies...
Andrex 4y ago
I'm curious about your gripes with Wikipedia. I donate regularly because it's still growing more useful to me year after year and has resisted ads and obscene partnerships.
- redox99 4y ago
  It's definitely better than the Mozilla situation, but here[1] is a good look at what I'm referring to. Basically their spending is insane and increases a lot each year (although it seems that 2020-2021 was the first period that it didn't increase). Their spending and rate of increase doesn't really make sense. I really like Wikipedia and use it a lot, but remember that the content comes from people that doesn't get paid, so when you think of what the funding gets you, think of the tech, servers, etc, not the articles themselves. And I definitely don't see as an user, what Wikipedia does with their 110M/year spending, that they couldn't do with their 30M/year spending in 2011 or even less. I mean they spend 110M/year, have a fairly simple website, and they couldn't manage to implement dark mode?[2] I also dislike that they run donation campaigns pretending like if you don't donate they're going down, when actually their financials are extremely good. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_Cancer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_C... [2] Outside of their "gadget" or whatever that is, for logged in users, which I just found exists https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Dark_mode https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Dark_mode
  - morjom 4y ago
    About the first ref. That seems insane! I'm a young guy with little financial knowledge but how does a website like Wikipedia spend that much money? What could've changed that much other than the amount of articles and traffic, which surely doesn't cost THAT much, right?
dbingham 4y ago
The argument is not that these other structures are perfect or free of problems, only that they are better for society on average than equity financed for-profit companies. Wikipedia and Mozilla are two examples. And yeah, they both have the challenges of large organizations - there's plenty to criticize in both. But to say that they wouldn't have these problems if they were for-profits is to simply ignore the universe of for-profit companies. Want a company ignoring their user base and going off on crazy side projects? I give you Meta. Want a company that steadfastly ignores its users and regularly does things directly harmful to them (including paying customers) with complete lack of accountability? I give you Google. And I would still argue that if you take the totality of impact of Mozilla and Wikipedia it is orders of magnitude more positive than any of the private companies I just listed off. Wikipedia is one of the best things on the internet. What ever governance struggles they are happening right now the public good they have done and are continuing to do is immeasurable. And it's pure public good. You cannot say the same thing about any private companies that could be considered their impact peer.

unity1001 4y ago

> They have some insane mismanagement of funds, which don't go where they are most needed, and where user want funds to go How is that any different from 'efficient' private companies...

Andrex 4y ago

I'm curious about your gripes with Wikipedia. I donate regularly because it's still growing more useful to me year after year and has resisted ads and obscene partnerships.

redox99 4y ago
It's definitely better than the Mozilla situation, but here[1] is a good look at what I'm referring to. Basically their spending is insane and increases a lot each year (although it seems that 2020-2021 was the first period that it didn't increase). Their spending and rate of increase doesn't really make sense. I really like Wikipedia and use it a lot, but remember that the content comes from people that doesn't get paid, so when you think of what the funding gets you, think of the tech, servers, etc, not the articles themselves. And I definitely don't see as an user, what Wikipedia does with their 110M/year spending, that they couldn't do with their 30M/year spending in 2011 or even less. I mean they spend 110M/year, have a fairly simple website, and they couldn't manage to implement dark mode?[2] I also dislike that they run donation campaigns pretending like if you don't donate they're going down, when actually their financials are extremely good. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_Cancer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_C... [2] Outside of their "gadget" or whatever that is, for logged in users, which I just found exists https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Dark_mode https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Dark_mode
- morjom 4y ago
  About the first ref. That seems insane! I'm a young guy with little financial knowledge but how does a website like Wikipedia spend that much money? What could've changed that much other than the amount of articles and traffic, which surely doesn't cost THAT much, right?

dbingham 4y ago

The argument is not that these other structures are perfect or free of problems, only that they are better for society on average than equity financed for-profit companies. Wikipedia and Mozilla are two examples. And yeah, they both have the challenges of large organizations - there's plenty to criticize in both. But to say that they wouldn't have these problems if they were for-profits is to simply ignore the universe of for-profit companies. Want a company ignoring their user base and going off on crazy side projects? I give you Meta. Want a company that steadfastly ignores its users and regularly does things directly harmful to them (including paying customers) with complete lack of accountability? I give you Google. And I would still argue that if you take the totality of impact of Mozilla and Wikipedia it is orders of magnitude more positive than any of the private companies I just listed off. Wikipedia is one of the best things on the internet. What ever governance struggles they are happening right now the public good they have done and are continuing to do is immeasurable. And it's pure public good. You cannot say the same thing about any private companies that could be considered their impact peer.