Re: Ah, wonderful copyright

K.G. Schneider wrote:
> how its nonprofit status is organized) "them" is pretty much "us."
> This is what Cracker Barrel learned after it went public: you are your
> stakeholders.The difference in OCLC's case is that I see the members,
> not OCLC, confused on this point.
Apparently the members aren't seeing that OCLC is indeed acting in their
interests.  So this is perhaps a problem OCLC needs to address. If,
however, OCLC were to think they should address this as a "marketting"
problem, then OCLC wouldn't be acting like a membership organization
either.

OCLC is, of course, different than Cracker Barrel in that it's owners
_are_ it's consumers. (You don't really mean _stakeholders_ there, you
are specifically talking about _shareholders_. All of the other
"stakeholdrers" stayed the same when Cracker Barrel went public, the
difference was the _owners_, who are in the end the stakeholders with
control, and that's why it mattered to Cracker Barrel).

So what does it mean for a business to be owned by it's consumers? How
would one expect such a business to act differently than an ordinary
business?   Can you ask a question as to whether such a business is
acting like it, or is acting like an ordinary business instead?

Jonathan

--
Jonathan Rochkind
Sr. Programmer/Analyst
The Sheridan Libraries
Johns Hopkins University
410.516.8886
rochkind (at) jhu.edu