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Trees not profits: we're giving up our right to ever sell Ecosia (2018)

blog.ecosia.org

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Re: Trees not profits: we're giving up our right to ever sell Ecosia (2018)

#121

Post by keybored »

roughly wrote: post #116

There’s a thing we tend to do as engineers where we hear a thing and then start thinking through the implications and design, which is normal, but also we seem to assume we’re the only ones who’ve ever thought about it, and therefore our concerns must be unaddressed, and we’re brilliant, so clearly nobody’s ever thought of them before, so we’ve gotta share them. If you’d like to see this behavior in action, this is t…

Skepticism should be the default stance when consuming press releases.

In fact it’s better to be arrogant than to be “neutral” (agnostic) towards a press release.

Re: Trees not profits: we're giving up our right to ever sell Ecosia (2018)

#122

Post by emseetech »

maltelandwehr wrote: post #100
dwedge wrote: post #8

I'm sure Ecosia are a good company, but headlines like this always make me a little suspicious. Non profits make a lot of money for their founders without it ever being "profit". Ecosia are reporting just over 600K euros a month in wages, I'd love to see the split and what % of that goes to the CEO. You don't need to sell a business if you have plenty of income from it every month - especially if now that can't be ta…

The CEO of Ecosia makes less than EUR 100k per year. At least that was the case when I interviewed there for an interim CPO role.

I don't see a problem with a non-profit CEO (or any employee) taking a large salary. Even if they do, the non-profit structure still removes large shareholders, who are not employees and can have an outsized influence without a commitment to the project or an understanding of its workings.

A successful non-profit that's also able to pay big, healthy salaries should be celebrated.

Re: Trees not profits: we're giving up our right to ever sell Ecosia (2018)

#123

Post by ryanjshaw »

roughly wrote: post #116

There’s a thing we tend to do as engineers where we hear a thing and then start thinking through the implications and design, which is normal, but also we seem to assume we’re the only ones who’ve ever thought about it, and therefore our concerns must be unaddressed, and we’re brilliant, so clearly nobody’s ever thought of them before, so we’ve gotta share them. If you’d like to see this behavior in action, this is t…

Whenever I catch myself doing this, I try to reframe my concerns from statements (e.g. "the wording here doesn't exclude XYZ scenario...") into questions (e.g. "does anybody know if XYZ is possible with this wording?").

Then what happens is I realize I can go answer that question myself by doing some research, and either I discover my original concern is unwarranted OR I can now state "well they said this but if you look here it's actually XYZ in fact!", which is much more interesting.

Re: Trees not profits: we're giving up our right to ever sell Ecosia (2018)

#124

Post by mrweasel »

jksflkjl3jk3 wrote: post #55
andy12_ wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because ad revenue can be used for the non-profit? Ecosia's whole thing is that when you use it, you indirectly help plant trees - "the search engine that plants trees".

Do they disclose what percentage of their revenue is donated? If it's just a token amount, then I'd rather not support a marketing gimmick and would prefer to just donate directly to an organization focused on trees. If it's a significant amount, then it seems unlikely that they'll be able to compete with for-profit alternatives that can focus on developing the best product.

I really struggle to understand your confusion. How do you think normal companies work?

Ecosia is profitable, they take some percentage of that profit and use to plant trees. In a "normal" company that money goes straight into the pockets of the company owners. Profit is measured after investments into R&D, salary, marketing everything that come with running a business.

Sure they could "just" spend more on developing their product, but from what I can see they don't really need to, it's already a good product. So rather than stuffing the pockets of an owner or shareholders, they donate that profit, or parts of it, to organisations that plants trees. Most people wouldn't donate to a tree planting organisation, but they will switch their search engine, if it's good enough and even if that plant only 100 trees, that's better than no trees.

I worked for a company that spends it's profit on helping sick children. The owners make enough money. They donate over €1.000.000 per year to a foundation, rather than putting that money into the pocket of the owners. The customers might not even know that they support that foundation, but that also doesn't matter as long as they get the products they want and the price they want. Your suggestion is that the owners should pocket that cash, and I should go donate to that foundation directly?

Re: Trees not profits: we're giving up our right to ever sell Ecosia (2018)

#125

Post by steve_adams_86 »

Blackthorn wrote: post #117
roughly wrote: post #116

There’s a thing we tend to do as engineers where we hear a thing and then start thinking through the implications and design, which is normal, but also we seem to assume we’re the only ones who’ve ever thought about it, and therefore our concerns must be unaddressed, and we’re brilliant, so clearly nobody’s ever thought of them before, so we’ve gotta share them. If you’d like to see this behavior in action, this is t…

That sort of arrogance is absolutely out of control in the tech industry and it's bizarre because I've never seen it at the remotely same level anywhere else.

It can make it difficult to work in the industry because you find yourself surrounded with expert beginners who (generally privately) think they're geniuses.

I love working with people who aren't afraid to solve problems, but are also firmly in the camp of recognizing how clueless we usually are. We shouldn't be terrified of failure, anxious about what we don't know, etc. But man, some humility goes a long way.

The alternative leads to terrible software, team dynamics, work-life balance, etc.

Re: Trees not profits: we're giving up our right to ever sell Ecosia (2018)

#126

Post by dwedge »

brookst wrote: post #92
notTooFarGone wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah seriously. "Oh no the entire company has wages - let's assume it's exploitation" Is basic divisive language that just perpetuates the "world is bad and there is no lesser evil" bs that drives current news fatigue imo. People are sure that 1 < 100000 but Google Vs ecosia is somehow more muddy.

“They’re trying to do better, which means they’re claiming to be perfect, but I am wise enough to know nobody’s perfect, so they’re a bunch of liars who are no better than all those other liars” It does get fatiguing.

That's a lot of projection in a forum where you're supposed to assume the best of people you talk with. I never presented that false dichotomy.

Re: Trees not profits: we're giving up our right to ever sell Ecosia (2018)

#127

Post by keybored »

fsckboy wrote: post #108
dwedge wrote: post #8

I'm sure Ecosia are a good company, but headlines like this always make me a little suspicious. Non profits make a lot of money for their founders without it ever being "profit". Ecosia are reporting just over 600K euros a month in wages, I'd love to see the split and what % of that goes to the CEO. You don't need to sell a business if you have plenty of income from it every month - especially if now that can't be ta…

> headlines like this always make me a little suspicious. Non profits make a lot of money for their founders without it ever being "profit" or more to the point, profits are not "bad", they are a measure of "good". profits mean you are providing something of value that people want, that without you is otherwise scarce. your profits attract competition/substitution, driving the price down and the value up to consumers…

In the narrow sense it’s good. It’s an optimization function, yes. With a wider lens it leads to problems that are just lumped into the big pile of things called Externalities. One of which is ecological collapse. Or just climate change if that sounds too drastic.

Capitalism is the most advanced mode of profit-driven systems. Where it inevitably leads to more and more inequality. Why? In part because money becomes the most fungible commodity. You can use it to buy everything (except happiness?). In turn you can buy all regulation. You can buy half of people’s everyday time (labor). There’s no breaks on it.

So it continues until some outside force stops it. Becaue it can’t regulate itself (with what, money?).

Re: Trees not profits: we're giving up our right to ever sell Ecosia (2018)

#129

Post by [deleted] »

roughly wrote: post #116

There’s a thing we tend to do as engineers where we hear a thing and then start thinking through the implications and design, which is normal, but also we seem to assume we’re the only ones who’ve ever thought about it, and therefore our concerns must be unaddressed, and we’re brilliant, so clearly nobody’s ever thought of them before, so we’ve gotta share them. If you’d like to see this behavior in action, this is t…

[deleted]

Re: Trees not profits: we're giving up our right to ever sell Ecosia (2018)

#130

Post by DannyBee »

lxgr wrote: post #95

> [...] my two promises by turning Ecosia into a so-called “steward-owned company”. This model imposes two legally binding and irreversible restrictions on us: I really hope that we'll get a legal precedent for this actually being possible and durable in at least some countries, because that was the promise of OpenAI at some point as well. (That's not to say I have reason to suspect anything bad of the current or any…

"I really hope that we'll get a legal precedent for this actually being possible and durable in at least some countries, because that was the promise of OpenAI at some point as well."

Lawyer here - it is basically impossible to do what they (and others) want.

There are few (if any?) countries, where either provision would survive bankruptcy, for example.

They could always choose to dissolve rather than restructure, but if they did choose to restructure, i'm not aware of a country where the restrictions here would be enforced on the successor.

On top of this, in most (all?) countries, agreements not to file for bankruptcy are not enforceable ;)

So that's one mechanism.

In most countries, however, these provisions would be "easily" removable through shareholder + officer vote.

Some companies go pretty far down the path of trying to use trusts as shareholders and requirements on trustees and such to try to ensure such a thing never occurs.

You can also do hilarious (to me) things like create enough shareholders (let's say 7 billion), make shares non-transferrable, etc, so that even though theoretically it requires a vote, such a vote is practically impossible.

I also had a friend who explored whether you could legally require the place of voting to be like "the surface of the sun" or something that ensures voting can't occur, but unfortunately, you usually can't.

Companies really aren't meant for this kind of thing - not that there is something better, but what tehy are trying to do is pretty fundamentally opposed to how countries want companies to operate.

If it's really a big enough deal, the "correct" answer is to create a new corporate form, much like we created LLC's, etc (LLC's are less than 100 years old, so it's not impossible)

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