Location: The Couchsurfing Project >> We are against CS becoming a for-profit corporationLogin for full access to Couchsurfing Groups. Not a member yet? Join our community!
Everyone, get active again!
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I'm still here but much has been said. Don't worry about the destructive power. CS is demonstrating very nicely how to self-destruct. Too bad that they don't seem to go forward with Google indexing.
But Google has done a good job with the search strings
" CouchSurfing Conversion" and " CouchSurfing Knowledge Base".
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Hey Florian
Thanks for you post! I was indeed very busy with a lot of other things, hence so far I could not do much and also am probably not completely aware of the current situation.
I find this B corporation thing strongly ridiculous for many different reasons. But we have a large advantage that we are still connected by CS, so we can coordinate our efforts and our actions.
Ok, I will try to understand what is the current state of things..
But from my ignorant state I can think of two things to do
1) organize mass demands for opening the CS website source code
2) demand a referendum of CS members with the question being "Do you want to be a member of CS as a B corporation or you prefer it to be a real non-profit?"
Be happy!
Alexey
"2) demand a referendum of CS members with the question being "Do you want to be a member of CS as a B corporation or you prefer it to be a real non-profit?""
CS is NOT a B Corporation.
Rather its only legal status is as an ordinary for-profit "C Corporation", incorporated in the state of Delaware, where no B Corporation legislation exists.
CS is legally obliged to "maximize stock holder profit" and cannot put any other criteria above that.
CS has indicated it will not pursue the legal Benefit Corporation status that is available to it in California, where its only offices are.
Hey!
Thanks for the info. I was very busy in the last few months and only now start to learn all the details about the situation. This means that the poll that is at the header of this group "Do you like that CS is becoming a B (Benefit) corporation?" is irrelevant.
Were there already any mass petitions or polls, or votes of members on this issue? If not, then why not?
So the proper question would be "Do you want to be a member of CS as a for-profit corporation or you prefer it to be a real non-profit?"
In the meanwhile I am definitely migrating to bewelcome for all hosting/surfing purposes until CS becomes a real non-profit.
But I will continue to use my cs profile to coordinate actions, keep connections and spread information.
"until CS becomes a real non-profit"
There are only two categories: for-profit and non-profit. Either you are non-profit or you are not. There is no such thing as a real non-profit or un unreal non-profit, or an "almost as good as non-profit". CS is now legally a for-profit C-Corporation.
If CS ever becomes a non-profit again, it certainly won't be through a poll.
That poll title was misleading, just as many journalists were mislead to believe that B-Corp and Benefit Corporation were the same. B-Corp is a Marketing label which you obtain for a fee, Benefit Corporation a new legal form in a few U.S. states, a legal form which CS decided not to choose.
OK, I would graciously agree to remove the word "real" from the question :))) now it reads:
"Do you want to be a member of CS as a for-profit corporation or you prefer CS to be a non-profit organization?"
Well, if the majority of CS members take part in the poll and vote for non-profit, it will be a very strong beginning for changing to non-profit. Because without the support of community CS cannot function. I would not underestimate the power of people. Another question is how to make CS members active, empower them to inform themselves and act accordingly.
Dear Polyglot
You seem to be very well informed about the situation. So what is the evidence in support of the story described here?
http://couchwiki.org/en/CouchSurfing_conversion_issues
I saw also a link with some of the documents, but there were many of them and I could not immediately find ones prooving this statement:
"The majority shareholders of BWTT, Casey Fenton and Dan Hoffer, issued shares to themselves and sold a minority share of the supposed $600,000 assets for $7,600,000 to two capital venture firms, Benchmark Capital and Omidyar Network."
It would be helpful to have the links to the documents directly in the wiki. I am willing to help with that.
Alexey, most of this is information published on the CouchSurfing website, in press releases and in the media, or confirmed by Casey Fenton during his conference tour back in October. You are a bit late to the discussion. When I find the time I'll try to document the sources with footnotes. Meanwhile if there is anything specific you question, I can try to help with those sources.
Let me take a shot at this one:
"The majority shareholders of BWTT, Casey Fenton and Dan Hoffer,": source Casey Fenton in Paris on October 10th, 2011
"issued shares to themselves": the incorporation papers are kept secret by CouchSurfing but this is how it works, how someone ends up as a shareholder of his company
"and sold a minority share": source: Casey Fenton and CS communication
"of the supposed $600,000 assets": source: Grant Thornton asset valuation.
"for $7,600,000 to two capital venture firms, Benchmark Capital and Omidyar Network.": source: CouchSurfing press release (and http://www.couchsurfing.org/news/article/144) and media articles such as this one.
If you look around this site you will find many answers to your questions.
Dear all
Thanks a lot for the answers. I indeed came late, since I was really busy in the last few months, but maybe that has an advantage of having a fresh view on some things.
I appreciate a lot of work that was done to uncover the details of the CS 'conversion' into a for-profit corporation.
I just want to perform things that need to be done by me as a decent human being and would like to ask everyone who has not done these to join me:
I pledge
1) not to use Couchsurfing for surfing/hosting purposes unless it becomes non-profit
2) to copy my profile to www.bewelcome.org and use it for surfing/hosting
3) to use my Couchsurfing profile to spread the information about CS conversion to for-profit corporation
4) to send a message to all my CS friends describing the reasons why I find CS becoming a for-profit corporation unacceptable with these links
http://couchwiki.org/en/CouchSurfing_%22conversion%22_issues
http://sites.google.com/site/cskbase/npo-privatization
I will ask all of you and all my CS friends to join me in these pledges.
This is the least I can do and it will have a positive effect however small it might be.
Thanks Alexey, these are all great actions. Actually, there is nothing wrong with continuing to use CS for surfing, especially if you have hosted in the past yourself and "paid forward". What is to be avoided is to let CS use your couch or generosity to make money for their shareholders.
Well, I think my surfing strategy would be to first try to find hosts on bewelcome, then in case I don't succeed to contact hosts on CS, but encourage them to continue our communication at bewelcome.
BTW any one knows how to send the same message to all friends on CS? :)
"BTW any one knows how to send the same message to all friends on CS? :)"
One-by-one by copy/paste. That is how far CS has gotten within 8 years, with $7 million in verification revenue and $7.6 + x in venture capital.
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Hi Maria.
"I don't exactly understand what makes CS so precious to investors"
You said it very well yourself: Because of the email addresses and profile content of users who "are interested is surfing, hosting and meeting, have a good time with nice people etc." and as far as lack of values is concerned "many people, especially young ones who almost grew up with FB, are already used to this kind of things and it's just normal for them". That sums it up quite nicely, unfortunately.
"I read somewhere in a blog (don't remember where it was) the heads of this two communities throwing mud at each other"
I believe that must be a misunderstanding. We had the founder and owner of HC troll around here for a couple of weeks but he has since shut up, but that's all I am aware of. If someone familiar with BeWelcome set the record straight, you should hold that against BeWelcome. I suggest you give it a try and make up your own mind. I believe this opensource, non-profit network running on a couple of hundred euros per year fits your values very well in many ways.
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I agree Miqueu, I also believe the investors seriously miscalculated because they did not, and probably still do not, understand this community. Good for them! For their plans, if any, to work out, they will have to make changes which will make CouchSurfing unrecognizable. But thats what Venture Capitalists do: speculate. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't. It is part of the calculation.
I expect that a few more "community builders" will open their eyes when the replacement of the former CEO with one put in place by the investors will be announced. That can create new momentum.
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Your comment intrigues me. It saddens me that you are no longer with us, and that many honest members have gone with you. I can't believe this is really happening, is this a nightmare? You can just tell that CS is dying, maybe the era of CS is gone for good. When all the real members are leaving, all that will be left over are the "facebookers". A little while ago I tried to find surfs in Sweden, but after a whopping 60 requests, and I mean personal written requests, I got just all those replies and seen the facebookprofiles which made it obvious that the real spirit was already gone. On the other hand, I have had too many freeloaders staying at my place, who brought nothing, said nothing, expected free meals and tours of my town, even had the audacity to complain in the end because apparently everything was my fault. The stupidest thing I have ever seen on CS was the open request option, yeah let's take the spirit completely away shall we? Just a quick glimpse and a skim through all the open requests and you'll see that all females receive +3 invites, but males none. ugh..that says it all.
I am clueless how to go on from here.. should I move too? The final date seems to be changed from sept 14 to sept 21
Hi Damian. The place where at the moment you are most likely to find the spirit which CS has lost is BeWelcome.org. The for-profit conversion and now this are the straw that broke the camel's back for many, but at least it works as the filter you describe, with hopefully most of the Facebookers left at CS and those who understand hospitality and share basic values building up a new community at a cosier place.
Thank you, yes I was about to migrate to BW, but should I minimize my profile here or abandon it? What would you suggest me to remove? Do you know if sept 14. was the final date for the new terms to come into force? Because the page with the new policy has a heading with sept 21 in it. I am a bit worried now, does it still matter, does it still help if I remove contents, destroy data, delete my face from my profile? Do you know if that sept 21 is the final date or am I already overdue?
I already noticed many members adopting nicknames, protect their profile pictures by censoring them or more drastically, removed their entire profiles before sept 14, and that's just sad.
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We don't know what the new terms of use will look like on the 21st. CS statements wanting to combine the initially planned terms of use and Safe Harbour principles are nonsensical as they are incompatible. I would'nt be surprised if they push back the date again. And I wouldn't be suprised if they went ahead anyway. CS rarely does things the way I or any professional organization would do them.
Meanwhile, my advice would be to remove all information you don't want CS to pretend they own, and use the remaining profile to voice your opinion about all this and to make other users aware of the issues and your offer to host via BeWelcome. Especially the mission, the personal description and the main profile picture are useful in this context as they are part of the summary in the search results.
In particular, as a matter of principle, I would remove any pictures showing other people as I cannot in good conscience transfer ownership or a license to these to CS and their sublicense partners, even if such a waiver of rights which I don't even have myself is most likely impossible and illegal. It is true that the images uploaded to the website are currently stored on amazon serves and remain there, accessible to anyone who knows the link address even after the link on the profile is removed, but the risk of it being (ab)used seems significantly smaller to me without the link.
Hope this helps.
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As far as the viability of the intended new terms of use goes, you must have missed the press release and complaint by the German Commissioner for Data Protection, and the press coverage.
The old ones are online. They also give CS exaggerated rights.
"I think, if you delete all the information and pictures before the 21th, they can't use it anymore after"
That's not what the terms of use say. Anyway, you cannot delete all information and pictures, only some information and the links to the pictures which remain on the server, and the the profile cannot be deleted, only "deactivated". I doubt they would want to use any of your pictures, though.
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Host 0 person on CS even if some people deserve being hosted.
It used to hurt me a lot to reject people (after filtering through the increase in freeloaders) ... but not anymore ... you get used to it ! :)
It's so easy being a greedy bastard !!!! Thanks C$$$$$
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"My impression about the current situation with BeWelcome is that there seem to be a lot of very interesting people. People who want to change the world, who want to live a different life than what capitalism is forcing them to."
Well, yes, but let's not get carried away. That's how CouchSurfing also supposedly started and look what happened. Not that I believe anything like that would ever happen to BeWelcome, but as far as I am concerned if I can just enjoy the company of honest, decent people with certain basic values when traveling and hosting without being taken advantage of by the website which falicitates those encounters or by freeloading guests, that is already a great achievement. Long live BeWelcome as it is today.
"My impression about the current situation with BeWelcome is that there seem to be a lot of very interesting people. People who want to change the world, who want to live a different life than what capitalism is forcing them to."
"Well, yes, but let's not get carried away. That's how CouchSurfing also supposedly started and look what happened."
CS central management was able to manipulate its non-profit status because the legal power was always restricted to one person, along with the 4 hand-selected people he allowed to fulfill legal obligations after the state objected to the illicit one-man operation.
I have not participated in BeWelcome.
But I have researched its legal status.
Its administrative structure, with numerous voting members, means that its present status is basically locked in. And any conceivable attempt to change structure would in all probability be immediately communicated to the community at large, and not kept secret as in the case of CS, because the number of people on the governing body is much more extensive and disinterested, and there are semi-public meetings at regular intervals..
Nothing is one hundred percent sure, but BeWelcome - especially under French law, much more restrictive than American law - does not seem vulnerable to privatization.
It may have other vulnerabilities, but these seem to result mostly from its democratic structure, and the fact that it depends solely on volunteer labour, which can tend to immobility.
Non-profit organizations usually find it necessary to engage paid staff in order to provide continuity and sufficient work resources when an organization reaches a certain size. Even in the open-source software field, where programmers donate hundreds of millions of dollars in computer expertise for free, there are often paid people in coordinating roles.
BeWelcome at the present time does not have enough programmers to deal with its desires for updating. But the site seems to be functional, even without improved or additional functions.
As an outsider, my analysis is that the site is functional and that it is true to its values and unlikely to be subject to manipulation. Its future will depend on the investment of users. Unlike with CS, it is reasonable to use the site without feeling that one is contributing to a monetized and dishonest world.
David
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"Why not push to add thıs type of features on CS??"
Because it didn't work even when CS was still non-profit and because today it is a complete joke. Have a look around the Brainstorm groups or my profile to get an idea of all that was suggested and never implemented.
Your suggestion to volunteer improvements to CS is a losing proposition: Either they will ignore it, which is the most likely action, or they will actually use it and you will have rewarded those who stole the non-profit assets. Is that what you want?
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The only risk I see to BeWelcome not turning out as intended would be that too many CouchSurfers frustrated with not finding hosts on CS will join and bring to it the freeloading aspect of CS. But at the moment the better spirit of BeWelcome members is significant.
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You can look at it this way: Your 25€ would have kept C$ running for 6.5 minutes, but it will keep BeWelcome going for 9 days (based on a $2.5 million vs. a 1000€ budget).
I would say the community is all right - thanks to its members.
The issue/question is: how/where/by whome the host-traveller communication-service might be run?
The issue raises because there is this unfortunate conversion from non-profit to profit state and the very-very unfortunate draft of ToU and PP. And these events are connected to the current service provider.
To make the DISTINCTION between the COMMUNITY and the SERVICE-PROVIDER might be crucial to find a satisfactory solution in this situation.
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from Paris, France (Permalink)
