Am I? This group wasn't able to separate the executive function from treasury function (despite their efforts to do so, it seems like this executive simply refused) - isn't that what caused this mess? If you structure an organization such that there is a single executive who cannot be held accountable - then your bus number is 1. Law enforcement cannot improve your bus number. It doesn't matter if your executive steals your money or gets hit by a bus, eventually something is going to happen to them and then your organization won't be able to recover from it.
If this was unclear, I'm not in favor of theft and am in favor of public goods. I'm not advocating for blind trust and am in favor of accountability - to peers in real time, not to law enforcement when the damage is already done.
If you want to know what I think, it's that horizontally organized groups, composed of as few people as possible (accepting redundancy to improve your bus number and allow for vacations and other contingencies), with a narrowly scoped mission, and without accepting more money than is necessary (as too much money leads to mission creep & perverse incentives) are the best way to do almost anything. A pyramid terminating with a single person is probably the worst.
> Law enforcement cannot improve your bus number [...]eventually something is going to happen to them and then your organization won't be able to recover from it.
In this particular instance, the regulators absolutely can. If the CEO is failing to discharge their duties, they will be disposed of as a company officer, and a new officer will be installed, who can get access to bank accounts and other resources (websites, domains, taxes) backed by the force of law. Not going to regulators is what wil lead to an irrevocable failure in this instance, but it appears the volunteers have already resigned to that fate.
I find rather suspect that the CEO registered a private company with a name similar to the non-profit they already run. I don't have full context, but that alone sets off alarm bells for fraud and/or self-dealing: I'd definitely contact oversight on that basis alone, if I had standing.
They may resolve these issues, but that doesn't improve your bus number. There's no guarantee they will, how long it will take, and whether the money will be there; this doesn't address the root problem. If you did all of that and then carried on in the same manner, you'd run into a similar problem eventually.
There's certainly things I find suspicious about this CEOs actions, I won't deny that. I'm still not going to contact law enforcement about strangers on the Internet.
> They may resolve these issues, but that doesn't improve your bus number
You're conflating negligence/dereliction of duty and bus-factor-of-one here, while Fosshost suffers from both, they are not the same thing.
Regulators can absolutely solve the former, but not the latter. The volunteers can solve the latter, but only after the former is resolved. I don't see why you assume why a new CEO would resist relinquishing all treasury duties.
> You're conflating negligence/dereliction of duty and bus-factor-of-one here, while Fosshost suffers from both, they are not the same thing.
I appreciate the distinction, but they're certainly related. We can see that because we can achieve the same result with a bus accident as with dereliction, and that addressing the dereliction without addressing the bus factor will result in a repeat of the problem.
> I don't see why you assume why a new CEO would resist relinquishing all treasury duties.
I don't, that was a thought experiment to illustrate the point that addressing the dereliction does not address the root cause.
We can certainly create much more effective systems of accountability than having a single point of failure who we threaten with legal action to keep them honest (just splitting up executive and treasury functions is already a huge improvement), and like I mentioned, that doesn't defend us against buses.
I think we can all agree that empirically, this single point of failure plan didn't work.
> If you structure an organization such that there is a single executive who cannot be held accountable
I think you're assuming an ideal, spherical organization, in a vacuum (as the physicists say). In other words, you're assuming that you can "just" structure your organization such that there's no single human point of failure, or that you can remove that point of failure without legal intervention. Which... well, you have to prove that!
Sure, but I don't think it's even that controversial or untested an idea. I think this is pretty common in startups, but they'd call it a "flat org-chart." It's generally seen as unacceptable to have the executive and treasurer be the same person, even in very vertical organizations. It's my observation that, if you leave people to their own devices to perform a task with a narrow scope, they pretty much form a horizontal organization where they make decisions by consensus, because that's what makes the most sense to them.
That being said, I do have a lot of ideas about this, which I am hoping to test by starting a company when I have the means to do so, and if you'd like to fund me, my email is in my bio. (/s)
Are you sure? Consider what happens when a CEO is suddenly unable to function. What happens to company property, intellectual property, notes, etc. that are in their possession? Do they magically vanish? Or do you try to recover them? Maybe the CEO's corporate laptop will show up on ebay with files intact. Is that an optimal outcome? What if the person lives alone? At what point is law enforcement a.k.a. "the gubment" involvement okay with you?
I don't really understand where this comment is coming from, I think you've maybe misinterpreted me; I'm not trying to say there is never an appropriate role for government, I'm saying not to call the cops on Internet strangers, and that accountability you proactively build into the structure of your organization is going to work much better than going through the legal system. But sure, it's okay for law enforcement to let you into the empty house of the late CEO, and if a stolen laptop shows up on eBay, it should be returned to you if possible. (But it's going to go a lot smoother for you if you use full disk encryption so that the stolen laptop can't be used to steal your files, and if you've backed them up to a company drive so you never lose access - you're not going to want to rely on law enforcement to give you these guarantees post hoc, and they're not going to be able to deliver on that most of the time.)
Do we actually disagree? The way you kinda derisively said "the gubment", and how previously you said I had "nice sentiments", makes me think maybe you don't like how I've expressed myself or that I'm reminding you of other ideas you don't like?
I'm just trying to explain why "don't call the cops on internet strangers" is too hardline of an argument for the real world, because everyone is a bit of an internet stranger.
I think if you read my comments in the sibling thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33849719 & the following 3 responses I make), which I view as the main part of my argument, you'll find nuance there & that I don't take a hardline position (I present a case & urge people to consider it, I don't prescribe any particular action). I was tired of explaining myself in this part of the thread & taking is as read that people had read that part of the conversation, but I should've tried harder to preserve the nuance. And I forget sometimes that other people's view in the UI looks very different from mine, so while from my perspective these comments were visually emphasized by being sorted higher, that probably wasn't the case for you.
I doubt you'll agree with me after reading those either, but I think you'll find it isn't a hardline stance.
If this was unclear, I'm not in favor of theft and am in favor of public goods. I'm not advocating for blind trust and am in favor of accountability - to peers in real time, not to law enforcement when the damage is already done.
If you want to know what I think, it's that horizontally organized groups, composed of as few people as possible (accepting redundancy to improve your bus number and allow for vacations and other contingencies), with a narrowly scoped mission, and without accepting more money than is necessary (as too much money leads to mission creep & perverse incentives) are the best way to do almost anything. A pyramid terminating with a single person is probably the worst.