Freecycle

[John Headstrong]

I'm a bit bleary-eyed Apparently the name comes from "FREEly Given, Locally, Easily".

ah, OK, that is the first I had heard that, sort of makes sense.

it looks like the whole thing is about local control over corporate US control and money, freecycle US has taken money from waste disposal companies and put google ads on their pages.
The thing is from a web developer / host / site geek point of view the old system used yahoogroups for communication and was free, freecycle built a new system and that cost money.

while I agree that these groups should be locally run with "support" from a network, by using yahoogroups there are adverts but freegle will not be getting the money for them (they are yahoos/microsfts ads) and not using google ads them selves they are cutting themselves off from a source of money, fine if everyone wants to work for free but servers and hosting need to be paid for, while it might not cover the whole cost of the server, like here, it will take some of the pain of the costs away.

more info

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Freecycle_Network

UK breakaway

Over the course of 2009, there was repeated conflict between the UK's Independent Association of Freecycle Moderators and the US-based founders of the company, regarding the lack of freedom for UK-based Freecycle groups to develop new localized initiatives and features, and their treatment of volunteer group owners and moderators [13]. This culminated in the UK Director Neil Morris and at least 20 local group owners and moderators being dismissed and replaced with US-based counterparts. In response the leaders of Brighton’s Freecycle group broke away from their US parent organisation and formed a rival site, GreenCycleSussex [14] and other UK-based Freecycle groups formed a new independent association called Freegle.[15][16]

As of September 21 2009, Freecyle UK claimed 494 groups with 1,722,575 members. This appears to include groups that have moved to Freegle, which as of the same date had 176 groups 784,204 members.

[dave45]

the problem I had with freecycle is that most stuff goes to the same people, .

How does your group work then? In my local group the giver chooses who gets what from the list of incoming email responses to an OFFERED posting. My colleague chooses the best or most entertaining sob-story and I have done the same on occasion :-)

(Try offering a knackered laptop and see how many hopefuls volunteer to try and fix it coz their daughter needs one for uni and their cousin knows a guy who works in a computer shop! ... better than landfill indeed.)

However I agree that the "Wanted flat-screen TV" type of entries come from a different ethos.

[biffvernon]

Apparently the name comes from "FREEly Given, Locally, Easily". Other than the name, nothing else has appeared to have changed at all.

Well, to be honest, someone came up with the name Freegle and then someone else, afterwards, said that it could stand for "FREEly Given, Locally, Easily" and then several people said "Oh yes, so it does!".

The money allegation is that the sponsorship and ad revenue, rather than going to Freecycle, was going mainly into the pockets of Deron Beal, his wife and his two friends with a bit more going to lawyers in defence of the trademark. But the real several straws that broke the camels back was the attempt to micro-manage UK groups from Tucson, Arizona with an overbearing insistance on rules which were not always locally appropriate and then treating longstanding moderators with complete contempt and removing them without discussion whenever concerns were voiced. It was really quite disgusting. Getting on for half the old Freecycle groups have now broken away and are under the new Freegle umbrella.

Members may not have noticed much difference but underneath, everything has changed.