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RStudio becomes a public benefit corporation

blog.rstudio.com

51–53 of 53 posts

Re: RStudio becomes a public benefit corporation

#51
post #48

It's interesting to see an organization like RStudio decide to change their status to a public benefit corporation, plus go through the process of becoming a certified B Corp. The nature of a PBC, in having more latitude to consider actions that don't necessarily build shareholder value as their primary concern, certainly seems to line up well with its open-source roots. I've tended to associate PBCs with companies l…

I think this is also a very rational move. IDEs and tooling is just participial about actual performance of said software, but also about the culture and community it is embedded in. So going for a long term commitment to open source is a strong signal to users and other stakeholders.

Bringing up Gitlab in this regard is a very good point, especially after MS bought Github..

Re: RStudio becomes a public benefit corporation

#53
post #41

Public benefit corporations sounds nice -- at least on paper. But ultimately, PBCs still tend to have a bunch of outside shareholders who are expecting to make a profit eventually. What I'd really love to see is more organizations considering a cooperative structure. Cooperatives are 100% owned by their members (in the case of consumer cooperatives) or workers (in the case of worker-owned cooperatives). There are no…

To add to your examples, Publix is one of the largest employee owned grocery stores in the US, and Vanguard is the largest mutual brokerage owned by its investor customers. It can be done!
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