
The Dropbox Foundation - mdu96
https://www.dropbox.com/news/company/announcing-the-dropbox-foundation
======
montrose
It is huge that they give unrestricted grants. I've been involved in the
nonprofit world a lot in the last few years, and the most surprising thing
I've learned is how depressingly common restricted grants are.

Restricted grants are when you give money to a nonprofit to do what you want,
rather than what they want. Usually this is some highly visible thing that the
donor can then claim credit for. These projects are almost never what the
nonprofit would have chosen to do themselves. Often they damage the nonprofit
significantly. I was talking to a nonprofit a few months ago that had branches
in two different cities quite far apart. I asked them why they'd chosen to
expand to another city rather than expand in the city they were in. Wasn't it
a distraction? They said it was, but that they'd gotten a restricted grant to
open a branch in the new city.

The less powerful nonprofits have no choice but to take such money. And they
don't dare complain about it, which is why you've never heard about this
issue. Exactly the opposite, in fact: they have to issue press releases
lauding the generosity of the donors. Which then perpetuates the problem, by
making it seem to future donors that restricted grants are how you're supposed
to do charity.

I don't know how Dropbox figured out that they should do unrestricted grants.
It's a remarkably sophisticated insight for beginners.

~~~
chrisseaton
> The less powerful nonprofits have no choice but to take such money.

Why can't they just say no if it's a not useful to them? How do the donors
force them to take the money? I can't donate money to you and tell you to
spend it on something - you'd just tell me to get lost.

~~~
mediaman
But it's tough when much of the available grants of size are restricted. Sure,
you could just shut down the nonprofit due to lack of funds.

But sitting in the nonprofit's shoes, when that grant is what you need to stay
alive, and is related to your mission, but doesn't reflect your priorities
within that mission, you're still going to take it unless you want to lay
everyone off and move on. And many nonprofits are in that position.

~~~
chrisseaton
Right so the grant _is_ helpful and welcome, that’s why they accept it.

~~~
Goronmon
What/who are you arguing against?

~~~
chrisseaton
The idea that charities take donations that damage them. They must be a net
benefit, as otherwise they are free to turn them down and they would do.

People are using language like ‘damaging’ and ‘no choice’. What they really
mean is the donations are useful but they could be more useful if
unrestricted.

Well yeah lots of things are more useful when you don’t have any
responsibilities along with them.

~~~
Certhas
I think this is meaningless pedantry. It's like saying if I hold a gun to your
head and tell you to dance, you always have a choice. Technically true but
diluting the term choice past the point of usefulness.

More subtly, it's assuming that costs and benefits are somehow quantifiable in
a single "benefit function". This is a modelling assumption that is often not
true. There can be a benefit ("at least we can get some money to some people")
that you can't turn down ("ethically can we turn down some money for some
people like this?") while also being deeply damaging ("we are 'selling our
soul' by acting as a PR arm for companies that want to improve their
reputation rather than lives. This is damaging the ethical undeprinning and
structural integrity of our organisation").

Summarizing this complex situation as a net benefit is naive and a bad model
that will lead you to incorrect conclusions (like: "well they must get a net
benefit, so it can't be that bad" rather than "we need to eliminate the
structural factors that lead to such situations.")

------
ktpsns
A foundation with 20M$ and these ambitious goals is a gift for the society.
However, it is also the typical American way of company-society interaction.
The actually intended way is called "paxing taxes". Dropbox, like a good part
of the US tech companies, has it's European site in Ireland, a country known
for its low tax rates [1].

[1] [https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/business-
spectator...](https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/business-
spectator/dropbox-confirms-irish-tax-dodge/news-
story/1b9ac0b9df2139eb4d42d00c4bf21969)

~~~
montrose
It is a big mistake to think that merely paying taxes is a sufficient
substitute for donations. Governments are like the biggest of big companies:
they tend to be very conservative about what they'll fund. Individual donors
and small foundations play a crucial role in funding the sort of risky
outliers that new ideas come from.

~~~
lozenge
There is also something to say for the continuous, reliable stream of spending
that is permitted by taxes. The world can't run on risky outliers alone.

Actually, it's exactly the reliability of SS/medicare/etc that make people
take it for granted and give it less attention than its dollar value would
suggest. People can plan for it to be around in 20 years which can't be said
for charity schemes.

~~~
montrose
That's true; nor are donations a sufficient substitute for taxes.

------
estsauver
This is really great to see unconditional grants! It would be really wonderful
to see this catch on as a norm for aide.

It seems a lot of time the specific conditions that are attached to a grant
are used as a way of trying to hedge against the PR risk for a
foundation/nonprofit that a grant was used improperly. I don't think
empirically it's that effective of a hedge against money being used poorly
anyway, organizations that will squander money will squander money.

It's also super exciting to see that they're offering in-kind support from
employees as well. We're working in rural Kenya where the internet can be
really challenging and I know that we'd be incredibly excited to work with
some of Dropboxes team on sync'ing problems. My impression has been that the
reliability and seamlessness of sync'ing at Dropbox has been primarily driven
by some absolutely world class distributed systems talent, and it'd be
phenomenal for organizations to get access to those employees/teams.

------
mful
> A big part of our mission has always been helping our users achieve their
> missions.

Do these types of PR lines from companies that make productivity tools
actually resonate with folks? At Dropbox’s scale, they probably materially
increase economic productivity, which is great. Why push some narrative about
helping aid workers achieve their mission?

This sort of language seems especially strange to me when announcing something
that actually can make significant social impact. The juxtaposition between
the Dropbox product and the work of this foundation jumps off the page.

Maybe it’s just me as I get older, but it seems so patronizing.

Anywho, this seems like a great project — great work DB, PR quibbles aside :)

~~~
frabbit
> Do these types of PR lines from companies that make productivity tools
> actually resonate with folks?

In the case of Dropbox, for me, it comes across as cynical virtue signalling.

If Dropbox were funding the EFF or the FSF or even dropping some funding to
CCC or FOSDEM then I could start to overlook their ties with the sort of
people¹ that create clients for Warchild.

As it is this stuff comes across as pretty horrible, and I keep on thinking
about Dropbox as being part of a network of businesses closely tied to the
military that create the problems that they now care about.

I realize I am not their target audience, but this PR has the effect of making
me dislike them more than ever.

1\. [http://www.drop-dropbox.com/](http://www.drop-dropbox.com/)

~~~
shaki-dora
"Virtue Signalling" was a stupid concept to begin with.[0]

But if you insist on using it, at least use it according to its _actual
meaning_ : proclaiming some supposed virtue without costs.

In this case, it doesn't apply because they are, actually, spending $20
million.

[0]: Because it's a cheap way to disparage anyone, cynically using the
perceived virtue of their stated opinion against them.

~~~
tgb
I doubt that's a widely accepted definition of it - I see it in [1] but there
the author claims to have coined the term in 2015 even though it clearly
predates that. However, the idea of signalling theory strongly includes the
idea of costly signals, the obvious example being the peacock's feathers. I
can't imagine that wouldn't be what a large part of what people mean when they
say "virtue signalling" even though they do mean it by "signalling" in a
broader context.

[1] [https://www.spectator.co.uk/2015/10/i-invented-virtue-
signal...](https://www.spectator.co.uk/2015/10/i-invented-virtue-signalling-
now-its-taking-over-the-world/)

~~~
shaki-dora
The usage here clearly refers to what Wikipedia calls "Pejorative Usage"[0].
The clearest definition there is "public, empty gestures intended to convey
socially approved attitude without any associated risk or sacrifice". This
does not apply, because the $20 million are clearly an "associated sacrifice".

The Dropbox Foundation does better fit the traditional definition in
signalling theory, i. e. "costly rituals, performed publicly, as a hard-to-
fake sign of commitment.". But OP did not intend to use that definition,
clearly shown by their term " _cynical_ virtue signalling".

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtue_signalling#Pejorative_u...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtue_signalling#Pejorative_usage)

~~~
tgb
Sorry, I don't understand. Are you saying that "costless/riskless" is part of
the "actual" definition? That's what your first post said, but this one citing
Wikipedia appears to suggest you think that is _misusing_ the term in a
pejorative sense. Though, in fact, that quoted you pulled form Wikipedia is
from the same source that I cited in my previous post as an author claiming
they invented the term at least 5 years after it was already in use. So I'm
not sure we should take it to be at all definitive.

Either way, I think you can use this idea pejoratively with or without that
part of the definition: Dropbox _says_ they support the community and these
stated values, they drop some money on it and go back to doing whatever else
they were doing that ignores these values. That's "signalling virtues" (by
some definition) that you don't actually live by, except when it suits you to
signal them.

(Note, I don't know enough about Dropbox to say that they are not actually
living by these virtues.)

------
staticelf
> For the past 10 years, we’ve seen the impact our products can have when they
> free up our time to focus on work that truly matters. Medical researchers
> share data sets to develop vaccines. Musicians compose scores. Aid workers
> access and coordinate information from the field.

Is it just me that think this is very cringy and reminds me of
[https://youtu.be/J-GVd_HLlps?t=31s](https://youtu.be/J-GVd_HLlps?t=31s)

I like that they help fund stuff but I just think the statement is kind of
hilarious.

~~~
throwawayyx96
Dropbox following the tried and true path of taking credit for tangentially
"enabling" the contributions of others. Kind of reminiscent of Apple's
statements about the massive impact of their company on the economy and job
creation in other industries.

Heck, as long as the bar is this low, Microsoft could write a similar sounding
PR statement to put some lipstick on their file system patent trolling - "At
Microsoft, we have an unwavering commitment to the fight against poverty. Our
storage technology has been crucial to the success of the one laptop per child
program."

------
pentae
I suppose when you're not able to give an unwavering commitment to protecting
your customers data, coming up with a completely unrelated corporate social
responsibility plan like this makes sense.

~~~
godzillabrennus
This. It's amazing how many big companies use Dropbox with how limited their
commitment to protecting customer data has been.

~~~
digi_owl
I suspect that corporations have much more leverage in this than consumers...

~~~
littlestymaar
For US corps maybe, but many foreign companies also use dropbox even though
they have little to no leverage in the US.

------
jimnotgym
<bus joke>You wait all day for a Foundation to come
along...[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16431800](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16431800)
</bus joke>

------
braderhart
I'll take an open source client and changelogs with each release please.

------
jxub
Looks like a PR stunt to jack up the hype before going public.

~~~
humanrebar
I've always felt strange metaphorically waving the flag of my employer while
doing charity work. I don't help people because of my paycheck, so it seems
inaccurate, at least, to brand my humanity with the name on my paycheck.

------
smackay
Open Question: What's the consensus of opinion regarding Dropbox while they
still have Condoleezza Rice on the Board of Directors?

Personally, I want to love them. I think Drew has built up a decent company.
However choosing Dr. Rice for the board, although she probably brings a lot to
the table, was an unforgivable act. The creation of the foundation is laudable
but feels a bit of a band-aid to solving their image problem. The choice of
War Child UK just rubs more salt into the wound for me however.

~~~
probably_wrong
I don't think there's a consensus. I've stopped using Dropbox due to that
choice, but their success tells me that this is not too problematic for most
of their users. I think it's one of those things were the product is just too
good for people to quit, even if they disagree with the business practices.

~~~
mateuszf
> I think it's one of those things were the product is just too good for
> people to quit, even if they disagree with the business practices.

This or most users don't even know/care about the company / software. They
just installed it to solve a problem and it works fine

~~~
wepple
This may be highly anecdotal, but I’m a Dropbox user, live in the US, read HN
probably daily, and still don’t know much about Condoleeza Rice or why it
would be good or bad having her on the board.

Very much installed it to solve a problem and it works fine

(But now I guess i have some reading to do)

~~~
xevb3k
Some information is available here:

[http://www.drop-dropbox.com](http://www.drop-dropbox.com)

------
fiatjaf
Wasn't Dropbox "a feature, not a product"?

~~~
gpvos
That's what Steve Jobs said. He can be wrong.

~~~
mmjaa
Dropbox should've been a feature of the operating system, but it isn't,
because OS vendors have convinced themselves there's nothing left to do since
the Internet is just going to solve all the hard problems now.

Seriously, I rue the day someone decided not to build-in such features as
Internet-wide file sharing into my operating system, giving me full control
over my content - subjugating me, instead, to the whims of yet another un-
trustable third party.

~~~
fiatjaf
Dropbox is a company that hosts your files.

If it was a feature of the operating system, who would host the files?

~~~
mmjaa
There are no good reasons I couldn't host my own files, with my own bandwidth,
on my perfectly cromulant server/mobile device.

The only issue is, it hasn't been considered of any importance to maintain
user agency; better we steal the users agency over their data/computers, put
it out 'in the cloud', and get them addicted/dependent on third parties, than
to make the operating system deliver similar levels of service, at scale, at
the local level.

What if, instead of getting all hot and bothered about browsers, OS-teams
instead focused on making source-/locality-/ownership- of user-generated data,
within the context of the local machine, available at scale?

Like, gimme IPFS open and operating by default, in my regular distro, and I'll
never have to host a site on a cloud server again...

Todays computers/bandwidth/connectivity can handle the load.

~~~
fiatjaf
No, they can't.

Also, the battery can't handle your laptop open 24/7 just to serve a couple of
files you _might_ need someday in your phone or other computer.

~~~
mmjaa
My systems can certainly handle the load I would impose upon them by sharing
content to my personal social network.

What they can't handle is the load imposed on them by the farming of data by
third-parties from my feed. But thats okay - because thats exactly what I want
to get rid of.

------
forgotmypw
No JS = blank page? Tab closed.

------
matt4077
So I guess they'll be sued any second now? Because people on the internet keep
telling me companies can't just give away shareholders' money? /s

~~~
rocqua
They aren't a public company. If they were, this might indeed cause some
activist investors to take measures that might include lawsuits.

~~~
matt4077
They obviously do have shareholders, though. And I doubt that they got
explicit consent from every single employee that owns shares or options, and
every single investor. I've also never seen the argument made with explicit
reference to _publicly traded_ corporations only.

They also filed for IPO in January. I doubt that they will shut down the
Foundation a few months after announcing it when they go public.

~~~
rocqua
There is less of a chance of activist funds buying up your stock when you
aren't public. This lessens the effect of activist investors.

Most shareholders don't care about the 'Do everything to make me money short
term'. Some activist investors do. Those are easier to keep out if you are a
private company.

------
JepZ
> The Foundation will instead offer flexible, unrestricted grants that our
> partners can use to meet their greatest needs.

When you read that and have the recent Oxfam scandal in mind, it creates some
interesting pictures.

Btw. I don't want to criticize the decision for unrestricted grants in any
way, as I don't have enough expertise in the field.

~~~
potatoyogurt
There's always a risk when you give money that it will be used in a way you
don't approve of or that is generally unsavory. Restrictions are one way to
try to control that, but they're not foolproof. I think ultimately if you're
willing to give money to an organization (and your goal is not just to get a
building built and named after you), you should feel comfortable enough with
its management that you're willing to trust it to make the right choices. If
management won't make the right choices, your money will probably be better
off elsewhere.

There are exceptions for organizations that are large enough to have multiple
organizations nested under them with competing or independent goals (such as a
university or a large charity with independent projects targeting different
issues).

~~~
colejohnson66
> There's always a risk when you give money that it will be used in a way you
> don't approve of...

I’ve seen people on the left get upset when they find out that the ACLU
defends the rights of people on the right in addition to those on the left.

~~~
sincerely
In the wake of Charlottesville I recall some ACLU workers resigning.

