Re:A.K.A.: Employee Buyout of a Corporation (Score 1)

we do something similar. however, our charter contains a democractic element and provides for an inclusion of five different interest groups or "production/consumption forces" (artists, users, open source, objectivity/rationality and employees). the core compentence of this collective decision making body is to distribute wealth/available budget: each of those interest fraction has a combined voting power of 20% in the case of important economic decisions (e.g. how much is the salary of the chairman?, how much is the membership fee? how much should an artist get for making a new simple and complex piece of work ("tender-content"?)

from a theoretical perspective, price setting (e.g. membership fees) and cost allocation (salary of chairman) is not primarily outcome of (external) demand and supply but rather the result of an "internal bargaing poll" between all production/consumption forces (subject to outside competitive pressure; however, we expect this pressure to be limited because of the not-for-profit goals of our foundation and the competitive market place advantage that the pro-bono motivations comes with.)

we decided to restrict the democratic inclusion of all interest fractions ("parties") to important economic decisions/fair distribution of wealth.

(at least initially) there is a "benevolent dictatorship" as regards fundamental, non-numerical questions (e.g. in the light of article I lit (a) of the digital license (providing for free access to community funded content), should we give our community members the possibility to retail investing and offer the sale of bonds and shares in entertainment content (which comes with access restrictions)? should we distribute exclusively in ogg/xvid?). those questions are first discussed with the supervisory board (interest fraction objectivity/rationality) and are not subject to voting.