Comment by petterroea
9 days ago
Why do orgs like Wikipedia and Mozilla keep hiring corporate CEOs thinking it will bring them anything else than toxic work culture
9 days ago
Why do orgs like Wikipedia and Mozilla keep hiring corporate CEOs thinking it will bring them anything else than toxic work culture
I'm a huge fan of co-operatives for this kind of org.
It would be interesting to create WikiMedia as a co-op and transfer ownership to editors, staff, donors, on some basis. There would be a huge argument about that basis, for sure. But if anyone has the experience to manage an enormous argument, and then handle the mechanics of conducting votes across multi-million-people ownership groups, it's WikiMedia.
Recently, every time there's a discussion about single CEOs and/or private equity ruining good things, co-operatives seem to come up. Maybe they aren't such a bad idea. Certainly, for starting a company or org, it seems like a decent option.
The big problem from a startup pov is that there's no way of getting conventional/VC funding into a co-op that doesn't break the model.
WikiMedia is different because it already has funds - you could reasonably offer donors an ownership share for their donation, and it wouldn't flood the voting.
It doesn't seem to be anywhere close to where they're heading, however, which is a shame.
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they promise more fundraising.
gnome foundation voted for a new president in 2010s who then hired several directors "specialized in fund raising" for obscene salaries, and then 4yrs iirc left, and the foundation declared bankruptcy or something
most devs in the board kept blogging what was happening, in kinda of an oblivious way. so it's a good insight on how those things are sold and how they happen.
https://web.archive.org/web/20200307222956/https://www.gnome...
They never declared bankruptcy.
Usually people who want these roles most are the least suitable for the job.