That’s crazy talk. Good luck finding volunteer coders with any significant ability or talent, willing to pour our their efforts and also agree to those expectations. The reality is, they keep defecting in waves. Why do you think that is, exactly?

It’s not even coders, it’s any volunteer, for nearly any situation. I’ve volunteered and solicited and encouraged volunteers for several org’s. You want a coder to provide something his masters will (and haven proven to want to) personally profit from, for no compensation?

And the reason for “not work[ing] for competing org’s” is so that CaseyInc. can then exclude any kind of “competitor” from making use of some of the same talent. This is a recipe for failure and rejection if I ever saw one.

And it’s the word “competitor” because Casey sees his collection of spaghetti code as something he can run as a business, like a business, only without actually compensating the people he tries to dupe into making him rich.

The (still) underlying cancer that consumes CaseyInc. (and sadly nearly everyone else who comes into close contact with “management” or the upper castes) is that he quite obviously expects as many other people as he can convince or manipulate, to expend their efforts not to help the greater good of HospEx, but to slave away on something he can personally own and benefit from. Some benefits exclusive to him alone, like actual cash profit or total power and control.

And he’s spent most of his own efforts on either gagging people, denying this, or working desperately on counter-spin and propaganda (to try) to keep this fact unknown. To no avail.

That, is why this site was founded – to allow even trolls and imbeciles to have a chance to speak, right, wrong, crazy… or even you. Something CaseyInc. has feared like a vampire fears sunlight from the beginning, for exactly the reasons I cited.

Casey Fenton is a selfish, deceitful, manipulative, egomaniacal, smug, shameless, remorseless waste of carbon and water. If there was any good at all to come out of “the great con” that is CS, it’s that it inspired new networks that came after to prohibit by design so many of the poisonous traps that have been the hallmark of Casey’s self-serving project.

I don’t like “users” and consider them a cancer on society, and if they’re bold and sociopathic enough, I also thoroughly enjoy firebombing their efforts and egos.

Several years ago (at CS), many people asked why the books and music they listed in their profiles or mentioned on the message boards always linked to a “buy it at Amazon.com” URL. A unique link, for every instance in which they posted words for something that Amazon had for sale.

Casey’s response? Pure deceit, claiming he didn’t know anything about it, or know how that detail was implemented, or otherwise he completely ignored the unanimous requests that it be removed.

That tells the entire story, in a single example.

Given that intimacy, I’m offended that you accuse me of “censoring” information. Censorship mean the intentional suppression of information on behalf of a regime because that regime deems the information a threat to its survival. That is simply not the case here.

I explained my exact reasoning to you in the Community Voice group for why I think it’s not appropriate to post a homepage news article about OpenCouchSurfing.org. Nowhere in my explanation did I say information about OCS is a threat that must be suppressed. Unless you think my reasoning was a lie, it’s unfair for you to accuse me of censorship.

To answer your question: where do I stand?

* I support the right of all members to safety, privacy, civil liberties, and the right to be a part of the discussion of how to run CS.
* I support a leadership team that is transparent about how it works, what it’s up to, and that provides that all members can influence its decisions.

That is why I signed the petition to help make CS more open. Where we disagree is here:

* I support CS owning and using proprietary source-code.
* I support an NDA that gives CS ownership of volunteer contributions and that asks volunteers not to work for competing organizations.

-ttt