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The first open company
- loceng 14y agoI feel this is how all charities should be run.
- ReadEvalPost 14y agoI'm with you on transparency, but I don't know how you expect charities to survive without paid employees.
- lowmagnet 14y agoI'd guess through volunteer time, as a lot of charities are run on the ground. Anything to reduce overhead cost.
- cbr 14y agoThis is a false bargain. Spending money on overhead can make the money the charity spends on its program go much further. http://blog.givewell.org/2007/01/16/which-of-these-boasts-is-not-like-the-others/ http://blog.givewell.org/2007/01/16/which-of-these-boasts-is... http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/06/09/why-ranking-charities-by-administrative-expenses-is-a-bad-idea/ http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/06/09/why-ranking-charities...
- sliverstorm 14y agoVolunteer time is valuable, but it can help to have full-timers in administrative/organizational positions. Of course, this observation is mostly based on larger charities, with assets and property and non-trivial operating costs. I could see how a tiny charity without these burdens could get along fine without.
- PotatoEngineer 14y agoThe trouble is that ultra-low-overhead charities can be completely ineffective. If a charity doesn't pay for computers, utilities, sorting machines, postage meters, etc. (or pays for only the bargain-basement minimum), then each hour of volunteered time is less effective than if there are sufficient facilities available. Overhead is, in reasonable quantities, a good thing.
- loceng 14y agoI think the issue is more with motives. If people have money incoming from elsewhere then it shows, at least some, that they're not doing it because they just want a paycheck.
- fiatpandas 14y agoI know of one charity that is pretty open and transparent about its operating procedures, scholarly findings and statistics, finances including employee compensation, and pretty much every other bit of data that doesn't compromise patient confidentiality (they operate a hospital in rural Nepal): http://nyayahealth.org http://nyayahealth.org
- brackin 14y agoI totally agree, which is why I'm working on a startup to make charities more transparent and allowing them to make use of the resources they can get once they do this. (Andrew@brack.in if anyone has any ideas).
- zende 14y agoThe open discussion on company decisions is the most open part to me (https://github.com/whit537/www.gittip.com/issues https://github.com/whit537/www.gittip.com/issues). That's more significant than releasing the source.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- amix 14y agoI like the idea behind Gittip, but I think this is bullshit: "company are developed for the benefit of society as a whole, and not just the mutual benefit of the members of the cooperative" Most companies are developed for the society and for people and most advances in human history have been done by for-profit organizations. Even the ideas in capitalism (as stated in e.g. Wealth of Nations) are grounded in benefits for the society and for the people.
- whit537 14y agoMy point about benefit to society vs. mutual benefit was a technical one about the definition of an open company vis-a-vis the definition of a cooperative, "an autonomous association of persons who voluntarily cooperate for their mutual social, economic, and cultural benefit"[0]. It wasn't meant to be ideological. I love cooperatives. I started one: an organic produce growers' cooperative. I also love Wealth of Nations, and I love capitalism. The company behind Gittip, Zeta Design & Development, LLC, was started in 2002 as a for-profit company and was run that way for a decade. Here's me praising corporations: http://blog.gittip.com/post/25215503687/corporations-and-open-ones http://blog.gittip.com/post/25215503687/corporations-and-ope... My question is, can we do even better? ---- [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative
- why-el 14y ago> most advances in human history have been done by for-profit organizations You mean most advances in (very) recent history right? And I am a bit skeptical about the claim that companies are developed for the benefit of the people. Again, I have a problem with your generalizations. At least in our field, a lot of the research is actually publicly funded.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- speg 14y agoEither my monitor is broken, or that is very light text on a white background...
- whit537 14y agoOr you're on Arch Linux? Does this ticket relate? https://github.com/whit537/www.gittip.com/issues/140 https://github.com/whit537/www.gittip.com/issues/140
- fusiongyro 14y agoCompletely unreadable for me in RHEL 5.7 + FF 7.0.11, even at 300% magnification.
- whit537 14y agoI've added this to the ticket: https://github.com/whit537/www.gittip.com/issues/140 https://github.com/whit537/www.gittip.com/issues/140
- crazygringo 14y agoPlease don't call this a "company" of any sort. A company that doesn't pay its employees is neither a company, nor does it have employees. And honestly, why is "cost" for non-employees allowed, but not cost for employees? An "open company" makes sense in terms of radical transparency, but a term like that shouldn't be related in any way to banning monetary compensation.
- whit537 14y agoI daresay the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania disagrees with you about whether Zeta Design & Development, LLC is a company. Cost for non-employees is "allowed" for the practical reason that if it weren't, an open company couldn't participate in the economy as it stands today. If you want transparency without the non-compensation, look into B Corporations: http://www.bcorporation.net/about http://www.bcorporation.net/about
- ry0ohki 14y agoDidn't realize this was a Pittsburgh area company, are you involved with any of the tech groups in the area? Also, you have my respect if you can pull off something non-standard within the state, I've found PA to be a real PITA to deal with compared to say Maryland or especially Delaware.
- ethanpil 14y agoWhat incentive do employees have to work for free? Why are you not calling yourself a non-profit?
- mwhite 14y agoI suppose he might gittip them.
- whit537 14y agoThe incentive is the same as open source programmers have to work for free. RE: non-profits ... from the post: "An open company differs from a non-profit organization in that an open company does not itself accept donations, and it does not compensate its employees. From the open company’s point of view, whether and how its employees receive money and for what, is undefined."
- DASD 14y agoSince when are non-profits required to accept donations or even have employees?
- whit537 14y agoDe jure, they're not. De facto, they do. No?
- DASD 14y agoNo. Please look up the idea of a private non-profit. There are quite a few around.
- whit537 14y agoIs this what you mean? "Non-profit organizations typically fall into one of two categories: public and private. While a public non-profit organization receives the majority of its funding from the general public, a private non-profit organization receives most of its funds from only a few private sources, such as through donations from a single family or corporation." http://smallbusiness.chron.com/difference-between-public-private-nonprofit-organizations-26366.html http://smallbusiness.chron.com/difference-between-public-pri... Still accepts donations. Still probably has a staff. Do you have a better link to what you're talking about?
- chatmasta 14y agoHellloooo communism.
- whit537 14y agoExactly. You can expect my secret police to visit you tonight. ;-)
- pfraze 14y agoHow will you solve the issue of fair pay among employees? Isn't it likely that public awareness and popularity would determine who gets paid, regardless of who does the work? If this model is successful, and people begin to see whit537 as a kind of celebrity (like notch or moot) then how would the other employees work their way into the revenue stream?
- WiseWeasel 14y agoHow is this different from most open source projects? Because it's a registered LLC? Because they have public policies enforcing transparency? Failing to pay your "employees" combined with an onerous set of requirements for them seems like a non-starter at worst, and unsustainable at best, since it takes all the fun out of volunteering. If I'm being held accountable and even liable for my involvement, I should be getting compensated for it. This just seems like the worst parts of corporate employment and open source projects mixed together for some reason; all the fun of filling out TPS reports, for none of the pay or benefits.
- whit537 14y agoFrom the post: "An open company differs from an open source project in that an open company is a formal legal entity, and needn’t be about software." The set of employees of an open company is much, much smaller than the set of people working on whatever-it-is that the open company nominally "owns"--really it's a commons. The only reason to have employees at all is to formalize access to private data such as passwords and private user data. Gittip, for example, has one employee, me. If you counted up everyone who has weighed in on GitHub we'd have maybe 20 or 30 community participants by now? Many more depending on how you draw the lines. If I understand you right, the "requirements" would apply to the small set of people with access to private data, not to the majority participating in building whatever-it-is together.
- WiseWeasel 14y agoI guess my confusion stems from the attractiveness of being an employee of this company. It sounds like these employees will be resolving customer support issues, since they need access to private account information, and they will be legally liable for their use of this private information, since their access is made public. Why would someone agree to do this kind of work without any compensation? How long will these employees stick around? What kind of vetting system could possibly ensure the integrity of these people with access to my account info?
- whit537 14y ago
- thomasknoll 14y ago"why?"
- terryk88a 14y agoto pull one's chain, to see what kind of reaction he'd get from whatever suckers and chumps he can fool with this BS or he really believes this BS and has narcissistic personality disorder
- whit537 14y agoYou have conclusively exhausted the possibilities.
- fredBuddemeyer 14y ago0 marginal cost goods and organized, free labor test the foundations of capitalism and necessitate the development of new institutions. this project adresses both of these - and the economic possibilities of patronage/tipping. why the hell not?
- potomak 14y agoI'm trying to do the same with http://tomato.es http://tomato.es
- drone 14y agoFunctional questions: 1) If all products are priced at-cost, and no employees are paid, is that to be assumed there will be no products sold that aren't at least, in part, developed using third parties? 2) If everything is priced at exactly their cost, what costs are factored in to pricing? Do you factor sunk cost, or only COGS? 2.a) If everything is priced at cost, and there is no added price for value, do you expect that every product will sell past its sunk and production costs? If not, who covers the loss when a product doesn't sell enough to meet its cost of production. (For example, some products require a minimum quantity to purchase/build before they are priced at a point the market will accept, to achieve pure cost parity without loss, you'd have to sell every unit in the same fiscal year.) 2.b) If 2.a can be accepted as some products will fail to meet their objectives, who makes up the difference? I.E. who put their money up-front to manufacture the products, and absorbs the loss?
- whit537 14y ago1) Afaict everyone depends on third parties. Even if I pick wild blackberries, where do I get the containers to put them in? 2) Sunk cost. The intention is to factor out wages and profit. 2.a) Maybe use Kickstarter here? 2.b) The community of people who want the product.
- dinkumthinkum 14y agoI had a lot of things to say but now I just have the one question. What's so wrong with making money? I'm really interested. I think a lot of outsiders to our industry would be surprised to know how rampant to anti-money view is or at least against anything other than earning a very modest, and very simple living.
- whit537 14y agoNothing's wrong with making money? I'm currently looking for $2,000.00 per week myself: https://www.gittip.com/whit537/ https://www.gittip.com/whit537/ ;^)