At least three volunteer developers have resigned from the CouchSurfing Tech Team on account of the new NDA that all volunteers will be required to sign.
The new NDA includes a non-compete clause preventing volunteers from working with any other travel or social networks. It also requires that volunteers transfer their Intellectual Property rights to CouchSurfing International Inc.
I heard that somebody describe it perfectly, they said “it’s not volunteering, it’s slavery”.
CouchSurfing.com is back online after almost 20 hours of down time.
This downtime was especially frustrating for a number of reasons.
1) It was unannounced. Even on the public developers list, there was no forewarning of the upgrade. No doubt travellers were left stranded while the site was down for almost a full day.
2) It clearly wasn’t planned well enough. There are so many willing and skilled volunteers who could have helped with this upgrade, if it weren’t for CouchSurfing’s ludicrous NDA.
I warmly encourage you to take action now, join the campaign, sign the petition.
I’m delighted to announce the launch of The OpenCouchSurfing Campaign. I fully support the campaign, I believe that CouchSurfing very much needs to embrace openness and transparency. It’s been a week or so in the making, and today is the culmination of our preparations. The word is out. Vive la revolucion!