Can someone explain to me how PBCs are structurally different than "regular" for-profit corporations? What's stopping them from turning "evil?"
RStudio becomes a public benefit corporation
11–20 of 53 posts
Re: RStudio becomes a public benefit corporation
#12Excited about this!
Re: RStudio becomes a public benefit corporation
#13Can someone explain to me how PBCs are structurally different than "regular" for-profit corporations? What's stopping them from turning "evil?"
[deleted]
Re: RStudio becomes a public benefit corporation
#14It'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.
Doh - I filed an issue on our internal tracker to fix this
I admire your speed at filing issues!
Especially in the tidyverse workshop yesterday.
Re: RStudio becomes a public benefit corporation
#15Can someone explain to me how PBCs are structurally different than "regular" for-profit corporations? What's stopping them from turning "evil?"
Traditional corporations in the US are legally required to maximize shareholder profit. 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.
Re: RStudio becomes a public benefit corporation
#16I 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.
My 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.
Re: RStudio becomes a public benefit corporation
#17It'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-corporati...
Re: RStudio becomes a public benefit corporation
#18@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!
Where is that?
Re: RStudio becomes a public benefit corporation
#19Can someone explain to me how PBCs are structurally different than "regular" for-profit corporations? What's stopping them from turning "evil?"
Traditional corporations in the US are legally required to maximize shareholder profit. 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]
Re: RStudio becomes a public benefit corporation
#20I 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.
My 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
Don't all entities-- public benefit corporations or otherwise -- experience "public relations form of accountability"?