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opencompany / www.opencompany.org

Website of the Open Company Initiative
https://www.opencompany.org
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Write a comparison to non-profits #8

Open veganstraightedge opened 10 years ago

veganstraightedge commented 10 years ago

I know that Open Companies™ are not non-profit orgs. But I think there are a lot of goals that overlap between the two.

Specifically, I'm starting a non-profit org called Open Source Offsets (@opensource). I'd like to run it inline with the vision of an open company as much as I can.

I'd love to see a document outlining the ways that a 501c3 is similar to an open company and the ways that they are different. <3

steveklabnik commented 10 years ago

:+1:

chadwhitacre commented 10 years ago

I see these as orthogonal. In my view we should define "open company" according to ideals and principles. We shouldn't define "open company" legally. An open company could use any legal form, including a non-profit.

joelmccracken commented 10 years ago

This reminds me of how free software and open source take on many forms.

It might be interesting to note how some organizations choose to represent themselves legally, without necessarily prescribing anything.

On Dec 20, 2013, at 8:10 AM, Chad Whitacre notifications@github.com wrote:

I see these as orthogonal. In my view we should define "open company" according to ideals and principles. We shouldn't define "open company" legally. An open company could use any legal form, including a non-profit.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub.

timothyfcook commented 10 years ago

I agree with Chad that open companies could use any legal form, but it may still be worth writing something. Any takers?

ityonemo commented 10 years ago

Having gone through the process of registering a 501(c)(3) (currently waiting for the IRS) I'd be happy to give it a crack.

veganstraightedge commented 10 years ago

@ityonemo That'd be great for me. I'm starting two separate very different ventures right now. One is a for profit thing. One is a nonprofit.

DateEdge/website and opensource/website

I plan to run both as open as possible.

Thanks for this discussion thread.

chadwhitacre commented 10 years ago

I'm labeling this a story idea for our nascent blog.

ityonemo commented 10 years ago

ok! I've been meaning to work on this but I've been out of whack for the last four days with a pretty serious flu. I'm starting to get better now, but it might also take a few days to get the rest of my life in order first.

veganstraightedge commented 10 years ago

@whit537 That sounds sane to me. Thanks.

ityonemo commented 10 years ago

@veganstraightedge Addressed some of these issues in Issue #72

nobodxbodon commented 3 months ago

How time flies! Hope everyone's well. As every company is open to some extent, we may always explore how to make a company more open and how to make revenue based on the extended openness, no matter whether the company is non-profit or not.

Take one business I recently found as an example, it's a small store where customers can play video games on ps/xbox or boardgames in store. Revenues are from:

Main costs other than the hardware/software are normal:

The owners are a couple, and after three years of full-time operating they can get more or less the average salary from this store.

Their income last year (from 2022-08 to 2023-08) was about ￥170K, and vlogs income was ￥66K so 1/3 of total.

vlogs of course is just one aspect to make revenue based on openness. With more people online seeing the everyday operating and fun in the store, they actually receive more customers visiting. Plus, they sometimes receive loads of video games, and related models and books from some fans (they got 410K followers now), and boardgames from producers, while they don't even have to do much embedded commercials in their vlogs. Not to mention the other cards, gifts and drinks they got from customers and online fans.

The owner acknowledged that there's a upper limit in revenue that can be make out of the customer fee and beverages, which is not far from current revenue. But they are already having much satisfaction in current state and income, as their customers are having great relationships with them and each other, which is IMO the top reason their vlogs are so popular.

With so many people want to see their store continue thriving, I can imagine many more ways that allow the fans who can't visit the store make their contributions. In turn they may get more open, like sharing more updated details in their stockings and insights of their business. Fans may be even willing to pay monthly fee for such details, for example.

[edited] BTW the requirements of business insights is already proved, as the owner mentioned many people who want to open similar business actually asked him online or in person about his business strategy and operational details like budgets and costs.