lemm.ee

13 points

1 year ago

You know I wonder if we could create a non profit that exists only to buy things and then donate them (IP, closed source, whatever) to the public domain. If you had a savvy board, such an organization could do a lot of good.

Something like this must already exist, right?

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jarfil@beehaw.org

2 points

1 year ago

A savvy board would get a 10% cut on each transaction, count me in!

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3 points

1 year ago

I mean they would need to be paid, but idk about a percentage. Mostly just to fairly compensate them for the time spent vetting deals.

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jarfil@beehaw.org

1 point

1 year ago

What’s savvy about getting paid just for your time? You need to get paid for expertise, opportunities, networking… that’s at least 10%, since a non-profit wouldn’t have preference shares.

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3 points

1 year ago

I’m leery about a percentage just because I perceive a conflict of interest. Overall compensation of 10% might be about right, but tying actual compensation to the cost of stuff that is bought creates a perverse incentive to overspend on things. That’s money donated for the betterment of humanity, not so I can have a 3 acre swimming pool.

But IDK maybe I’m looking at it wrong.

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jarfil@beehaw.org

1 point

1 year ago

I think you are looking at it kind of wrong, in that: with a savvy board, the first savvy thing they would do, would be to guarantee their own self-benefit, going head first into a conflict of interest… meaning you can’t have a project like that driven by a savvy board, instead you need an altruistic, idealistic, etc. board… but then, a non-savvy board, would be much likely to just squander the money, or get swindled out of it, so… I don’t think a project like that would ever work as expected.

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1 point

1 year ago

Fair enough. It’s a two-edged sword.

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