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At least three volunteer developers have resigned from the CouchSurfing Tech Team on account of the new NDA that all volunteers will be required to sign.
The new NDA includes a non-compete clause preventing volunteers from working with any other travel or social networks. It also requires that volunteers transfer their Intellectual Property rights to CouchSurfing International Inc.
I heard that somebody describe it perfectly, they said “it’s not volunteering, it’s slavery”.
It is difficult to describe just how shocking the last 24 hours have been. The final result is pretty clear though: instead of taking any practical step towards Openness and Freedom, Couchsurfing has decided to take the path of a closed, protected, corporate-like structure.
A brief history:
After that, there was a mixture of saying goodbye, total apathy and more nastiness (style: “Glad you guys are gone”). The Leadership Circle still doesn’t have the guts to publish the Volunteer Agreement.
So, what are we left with after 1,5 weeks of campaigning?
To put it simply: OpenCouchSurfing has failed miserably in its goals. Even though around 70 people ended up signing our petition, including Heather O’Brian and Jim Stone (both part of the Leadership Circle), none of it made any difference.
Have we made matters worse? I don’t think so, because clearly these things were already being planned for a long time. We have however clearly accelerated the process and discovered things that were meant to be kept secret. The back-room dealings, the secrecy, the buddy-systems, the social manipulation, all of these things are not new to me and can happen in any organisation. The scale and rate at which they happen in Couchsurfing, an organisation that boasts a mission to “Participate in Creating a Better World, One Couch at a Time” is however frightening.
There are only three options left:
Out of self-respect, I will obviously choose the latter.
The End.
I said I would continue to contribute if it does “more good than harm,” but I’ve decided to change my stance on an issue, and I’m resigning from the CS dev team & mailing lists.
Prior to working on couchsurfing, I decided that I only wanted to work on Open Source software. When I heard that Kasper was pushing for couch surfing to be open it sparked my interest.
Open source is important to me, because it represents a freedom of information and ideas. But for the record, it wasn’t the non-opensource thing that made me leave per-se; it’s the resistance & lack of communication to comment on, or work towards a New NDA.
Maybe I should hang on and wait, because something is right around the corner?
These issues are old, months old. Now I’m cynical enough to think a delay or a ‘not now’ is a politically correct way of saying ‘no’. So, I’m now changing my tactic; If they get addressed then I’ll rejoin.
There’s no reason we need a non-compete clause. I had contemplated signing a non-compete that still permits me to just work for MySQL; but now I’ve decided I’ll choose who I work for.
I had some good times at the Collective. My two most treasured memories include learning how to drink scotch and beer with Gardner (a first for me, and a lesson that will no doubt further me in life), and performance hacking with Joe & Kasper in a 3-way screen, sitting next to each other.
Walter: I’d like to still come and visit the Collective, but I’m withdrawing my request to participate. I enjoyed seeing your comments on MySQL optimization, and that you could also spot so many of the changes that needed doing. It’s unfortunate we didn’t really get the
change to work together.
I’ll still keep couchsurfing like everyone else, so keep making the site better!
Wow. Within a week of launching OpenCouchSurfing, we’ve seen an immediate upgrade to the CS DB (resulting in the site being down for 18 hours). They (*) have announced upgrading the webservers as well (to reduce the current security risks). The “Leadership Team” has finally been made official. Now, some of these things have been announced before (the DB upgrade and Leadership circle), but it seems like to much of a coïncidence that all this happens in one week. So, this effort seems to have good and positive effects which strengthens us to continue to improve things.
What I wanted to talk about is the Leadership Team. At first view, it seems like it is indeed a step in the right directon. At second view it actually makes matters worse and formalizes the closed culture of CS. Let’s have a look, shall we? The most important sections to pay attention to:
What does this mean in practice? A boys club. You are not allowed in unless you are in good standing with the Leadership group, because they hold each and every means to allow or disallow you. Dissenting ambassadors are explicitely discouraged from even trying to apply (“in good standing”), not that they could get in anyway. Oh, wait. There is no application process defined. Never mind. But there’s no official end to a Leadership position anyway, so we don’t actually need candidates. But hey! Ambassadors can censure a leader, right? Uhm. No. Leaders are only required to make a public statement regarding the “planned action” to address this. Case closed. There is no way in and no way to get anyone out. A proper way to do it would have been to let the ambassadors actually vote for their “leaders” every year or so, but I guess that is too threatening for the existing power structure. The current state of affairs is just outrageous.
Transparancy by biannual reports? This is not transparancy, this is PR. We need insight into the decision making process and there need to be tools in place to ensure accountability, not just promises of “focussing on the mission”. We don’t need binannual PR reports.
Funny intermezzo: Look at the Leadership Qualities page. Now have a look at the self-evaluation form for level B registered nurses. E.g. “Teamwork: Interacts effectively and builds respectful relationships among individuals and in teams” (leader) versus “Teamwork: Interacts effectively and builds respectful relationships within and between units and among individuals.” (nurse). Some requirements are copied almost verbatim. So, are we getting leaders or nurses? On a more serious note, this is indicative of the increasing use of marketing speak coming from the Leadership Circle. They’re not talking, they’re making announcements/press releases. This is no way to treat a community run by volunteers. And it doesn’t speak well for the effort put into this document that parts are just copied of the net, it definitely makes it seem like a rushed PR job.
What is all of this lacking?
Say no to the circle of level B nurses**. Write to them and demand direct representation, transparancy and accountability. Help us make CS more Open and Free.
*: There has been a lot of complaining about using “us vs. them” language, which is just annoying. Raise your hand if you don’t know who “they” are. You’ll know when you’re not part of “them”.
**: It’s called humor people.
CouchSurfing.com is back online after almost 20 hours of down time.
This downtime was especially frustrating for a number of reasons.
1) It was unannounced. Even on the public developers list, there was no forewarning of the upgrade. No doubt travellers were left stranded while the site was down for almost a full day.
2) It clearly wasn’t planned well enough. There are so many willing and skilled volunteers who could have helped with this upgrade, if it weren’t for CouchSurfing’s ludicrous NDA.
I warmly encourage you to take action now, join the campaign, sign the petition.
Great! Finally! Some tangible (public) information about the Leadership Circle! Mattthew started articles on the CS wiki about the Leadership Team and the Leadership Qualities. I will refrain myself from any comments, since I won’t do any better than Anu:
How about these?
- Ability for respectful conflict resolution through confrontation rather than avoidance
- Ability for open, direct and sincere dialog with the community
- Ability to take in and reflect upon constructive criticism and act on it accordingly
- Ability to operate in a multi-cultural environment, actively realizing the mission of inter-cultural understanding in accepting varying communication styles and other differences stemming from diverse cultural backgrounds
- Ability to operate in a largely virtual organization
… then I went to sleep for a couple of hours.
When waking up I was surprised to see that:
To create a bit of balance I then started the Dissident Team.
This site has been getting quite a bit of attention so far. Couchsurfers are responding to these issues from all sides, both positively and negatively. Overall, it can be said that the majority of reactions respond positively to the concept of more openness. The main objections are to the style of communication and to individual campaigns.
Why in this (direct and not so subtle) way? Why not through the organisation itself? Why now? Why not wait for … (insert something here)?
The Wiki main page adresses this more thouroughly, but simply put:
Things that have been long overdue:
On a side note, we’re trying (as per some people’s suggestion) to present the “other side” of the argument as well. Please help us complete the Wiki with pro’s and con’s.
Mattthew Brauer is one of the people who is involved in the creation of a new Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) for CouchSurfing. The current NDA is simply ridiculous, it transfers all trade secrets from the volunteer to CouchSurfing. A trade secret is a very ill-defined term that literally can include anything you can think of, such as “programming techniques” and “software patents”. The NDA should be limited to giving CouchSurfing a license to use the work of the volunteer, it should not try to transfer copyrights or just ideas.
My main concern for the new NDA used to be this part. A secondary concern is the non-compete clause, which forbids the signee from working for related organizations or companies, which is, again a bit vague. It could mean that if you sign the NDA, you can’t work for any other website. Or you can’t work for a travel agency.
When I signed the NDA in August 2006, Casey told me the NDA would be changed. This year I found out Casey Fenton had already been promising a new NDA in June 2006. It’s nearly one year later and no draft has been shown to people outside the Leadership Circle. Mattthew, one of the people who was working on this wrote yesterday:
I support a reasonable non-compete clause. The non-compete clause will apply only to other travel related social networks and will last for one year. It’s good for CS to require a commitment from volunteers. They have to make the choice to work for CS over competitors, and if they make that commitment, they are likely to be dedicated and motivated. It’s also safest for CS to ask that volunteers don’t immediately go work for competitors with the knowledge they’ve gained from CS.
…and I am deeply shocked. I know that many CS volunteers are also volunteers for Hospitality Club. I know that most people don’t give a damn about whether it’s called CouchSurfing, Servas, HomeStay, WWOOFing, WarmShowersList, BeWelcome, or WhatEver, as long as they meet interesting people. Most volunteers care about the mission of all these organization a lot more than that they care about the individual organizations.
And what about Hitchwiki, Wikitravel and other websites created by travelers. Add “friend links” and voila, suddenly it’s a travel related network, and anyone who has signed the NDA for CouchSurfing can’t work on these projects anymore.
from feeling part of something bigger, from responsibility. Someone who takes the step to find out how to volunteer is already motivated, and in CS, if they actually get to do something they must have been truly very dedicated, going through mires of information, contacting many people without getting replies. Commitment doesn’t come through the force of law.
If there will be any non-compete clause in the new NDA, I will stop doing any work for CouchSurfing and demand that the NDA I signed in August is declared void. I am sure that other technically inclined people will do the same. Since the NDA is also supposed to be signed by many more people CouchSurfing will loose a lot of its core volunteers, the people who have been struggling for more transparency, who have been working off their asses for free, and who have been able to keep the site running. If they leave, CS will be left amputated and there will just be a core of people who highly value secrecy and prefer to work with people who think the same as they do and with whom they have been close friends with for a long time.
Kasper
P.S. If there will be a non-compete clause the OpenCS project could be terminated very soon: Yesterday I heard it’s likely that BeWelcome will soon release their code under the GNU General Public License.
It seems obvious that it is important to reach as many Couchsurfers as possible with Open Couchsurfing. If nothing else, it allows us to see the community’s thoughts and opinions on the topic.
For this exact reason, we have proposed a news item on Couchsurfing.com.
Mattthew Brauer posted the following in reply: “Constructive criticism is great and needed, but the purpose of the news is to inspire people and promote CouchSurfing, not to highlight the things that may or may not need improving.”
There are couple of things wrong with this attitude:
Help us publish this news item. Write Mattthew Brauer to show your support.
As expected, the topics addressed on this site have caused quite a few reactions already. For the sake of Openness, we will try to list as many as possible on the Wiki in Category:Reactions.
A very interesting reaction came from Leonarde Silveira, one of the admins. Most of the conversation was over the phone, but in summary he was definitely not against opening up a dialog. His main concern was a too polarized view on this site, the fact that the “other side” of the discussion is underrepresented. In my opinion this is certainly a valid concern; it is a valuable exercise to add possible reasons for the current situation. I did encourage him (and hereby other admins as well) to also send us their view on some of our topics, which he promised to do. Other than that, logging all of the discussions and different viewpoints seem like a fair and balanced approach.
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