

Ask HN: Is there an example of a company legally promising not to "sell out"? - jmnicholson


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kape
Whatsapp competitor Telegram is promising that. Not sure if it's legally
binding though. (They're also saying that they're not "commercial company").

"Telegram is not intended to bring revenue, it will never sell ads or accept
outside investment. It also cannot be sold. We're not building a “user base”,
we are building a messenger for the people."

[https://telegram.org/faq#q-how-are-you-going-to-make-
money-o...](https://telegram.org/faq#q-how-are-you-going-to-make-money-out-of-
this)

~~~
onedev
This is actually really awesome. I know telegram received a lot of flak for
their bold security claims, but it really is a fantastic messenger. It's the
best I've used that's available in the app store aside from Facebook's.

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staunch
In practice there would be no good way to make it legally binding. Even
defining what you mean by "selling out" would be incredibly difficult in plain
English let alone codifying it in legalese.

I don't think you can trust an organization anymore than you can "trust" a
weapon. A bad person could theoretically take control of it and use it for
evil.

The closest you can get is trusting the individual at the helm. You know
Automattic isn't going to do anything weird as long as Matt Mullenweg is the
dictator.

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jf22
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benefit_corporation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benefit_corporation)

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MrQuincle
I wouldn't mind so much for "legal". If a company is owned by someone who is
incredibly rich (and this person wants to be in there for the fun), it won't
be for sale. This person can end up under a bus of course, so I don't know to
whom you want to promise this. :-)

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philiphodgen
Using that criterion the immediate example is Craigslist.

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anthony_franco
Closest company I've heard that does it is posthaven.com

Granted, there's nothing legally binding. But it's one of their selling
points.

~~~
jmnicholson
Thanks, this is an example of what I was looking for. We are an independent
scientific publisher (thewinnower.com) and we want to ensure our users that we
will not give over control to giants like Elsevier or Sage, should we ever get
to that point. Kind of like Mendeley and
Elsevier([http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2013/04/elsev...](http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2013/04/elsevier-
mendeley-journals-science-software.html))

