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Comment by WiseWeasel | Hacker News Reader

How 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.

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From 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.

I 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?

s/employee/open source programmer

That doesn't really follow. I can easily answer: Why would someone agree to [program] without any compensation?

It's fun, and adding/fixing a feature for everyone means they might add or fix a feature for me.

What I can't answer is: Why would someone agree to [do data entry/handle customer support/agree to be legally liable] without any compensation?

Those activities aren't fun, and if I handle customer support for you there's nothing in it for me.

Further, a lot of open-source programmers are getting paid. See [1] for Linux, the Mozilla Foundation for their applications, Joyent for Node.js, &c.

[1] http://apcmag.com/linux-now-75-corporate.htm

Years ago, I spent a lot of time providing free Mac support on IRC, back when Dalnet was busy. Occasionally there were issues that took a huge amount of effort to resolve; in one of the few cases I still remember, I learned enough Cocoa to answer a newbie programmer's question. There was a small but dedicated group that all did the same thing, and other channels on other networks full of volunteers doing the same.

StackExchange is a huge network of volunteers helping to answer other people's questions, for no (real) compensation.

They might not be fun for you, but I think there are plenty of people that just like to help other people.

Those activities aren't fun, and if I handle customer support for you there's nothing in it for me.

There's volunteering and charitable organizations that do mundane work, right? I guess this is just a different type of public service.

Wouldn't this be pretty much like MediaWiki, prior to it having paid employees, or other non-profit foundations?

I'm actually not clear why this is a company instead of a non-profit foundation. It says:

"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."

A non-profit can also not accept donations and not compensate employees, so the only thing that differs might be how employees receive money, which I don't really understand here.

Probably yes re: early MediaWiki. It's not a non-profit because it's not registered as such with a government.

You are correct. There are private and public non-profits. Similar comments further down the thread.

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