Hey, will try to briefly talk to some of these points here.
I see that the only stable equilibrium for The Flux Startup is to be providing the best possible democracy, so if we compromise that then the startup fails. I can never fully rebut this argument because there are potentially infinite ways to introduce conflicts of interest, though I'd argue with conscientious management that won't happen. We'd also like to set things up in such a way to minimise this risk.
The main point of running it as a startup is to take venture capital. Not for profits will probably play a role in the organisational structure somewhere, but I think a purely not-for-profit structure is too romantic (which is another reason we went down this path).
Why? It can save nations billions of dollars a year, provides a return for those willing to risk putting time/energy/money behind the movement, is fully transparent and upfront so nobody is voting for us and finding themselves in a bait and switch, and more than anything else we want to get this implemented and so far the 10+ e-democracy movements around the world have gone nowhere (though not for lack of trying, arguably for lack of money, though).
Eh, it's a name, it's also unambiguous. We can worry about changing it when we have billions of empowered users.
The important bits will be, though it doesn't always make sense to always make everything open source. It does make sense to audit things and take as many precautions as possible to ensure code operates correctly though.
When I say important I'm talking about things for which it's important to be open source, not critical infrastructure.
At this stage:
- All clients will be open source
- All auditing suits will be open source
- The onboarding service probably won't be
Nothing is set in stone though.
The code isn't being commercialised, the value of the ecosystem will be, though. Just because a Pty Ltd is involved doesn't mean we become the next Microsoft. Have a look at my github, I have a long history of open code and I am very much on the side of open code.
Currently Nathan and I lead both. That will continue for a while then we'll let go of The Flux Party and let other people run that.
- 170k from me
- 50k from Nathan
- 50k from friends (due to Australian law we can't advertise to investors, though can approach friends and family, etc) - just for general privacy we won't disclose these two people at this stage, though if they want to disclose themselves that's fine.
The idea is that this represents 10% of the final value. Nathan and I also have a 40/60 split of Founder shares, which are another 10%. Technically these are the only shares because Aus law doesn't let us create them all upfront. Working on a soln for this after the election though.
I don't think so. People don't get confused when you talk about "SpaceX v SpaceX Community" and I see this similarly. The Flux Movement involves a party and a startup at this stage, but there's no reason that won't expand in future to include not-for-profits, or foundations, or other parties. I like simple names rather than things like 'parakeela'.
We want to provide a service to voters for free, and we want to focus on building instead of canvassing donations or applying for grants. The difficulty of accessing money (including time and effort) is a major barrier IMO to NFPs. I've been through a few grant processes before and it's enough to turn me, personally, off.
We would love for these to be one and the same, and are trying really hard to make that happen. Current timelines prevented us from doing this before the election, though.
There's no reason we can't be as transparent. The idea that NFP=transparency and PtyLtd=evil-corporation is not based in explanation, just evidence. There's no reason we have to be the same as what's come before.
These aren't mutually exclusive.
Our plan to generate revenue (at this stage) won't take effect for like a decade. As much time as possible is being spent on raising interest currently, and basically the only other things we're spending time on is engaging with members and preparing for July 2.
Again, these are not mutually exclusive. Discourse, the company that builds this forum software is a great example. Completely open source, but also for profit.
Dev will be open to some extent too. All relevant code will be available before ppl start voting with it (particularly the client and audit suites).
See above, quoting to link.
