> As he's been the largest shareholder at the company, with his departure he decided to transition the firm to being an employee ownership trust. The trust will see that CodeWeavers continues to operate for the benefit of the community and staff.<p>I'm not familiar with the "employee ownership trust" concept, so I was curious as to how it differed from a worker co-op. On reading a layperson description, is it perhaps misnamed? It seems like people consider it to be a form of employee ownership, but (a) employees do not buy in (b) employees are not bought out when they leave (c) employees do not necessarily have any kind of voting rights, and the trust could be managed by trustees who are not elected by (or from among) employees. It sounds like EOTs _can_ share profits or pay dividends out to employees, but don't need to. So in what sense is it employee "ownership"? It seems like it's just a perpetual trust whose goal includes employee well-being.<p>An org on employee ownership says [1]:<p>> There is no legal definition of what separates an EOT from similar trusts, but to be an EOT, the purpose of the trust should include the well-being of the company’s employees.<p>So it's a trust which exists _for_ the employees, but does that mean the _own_ it?<p>A few months ago I listened to this podcast [3] about a perpetual trust set up to benefit stray cats. Despite it being created _for_ stray cats, of course no one claims that the trust is _owned_ by stray cats.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.nceo.org/article/introduction-employee-ownership-trusts" rel="nofollow">https://www.nceo.org/article/introduction-employee-ownership...</a>
[2] <a href="https://www.esoppartners.com/blog/employee-ownership-models" rel="nofollow">https://www.esoppartners.com/blog/employee-ownership-models</a>
[3] <a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/02/22/1158865140/stray-cats-dixfield-maine-trust-inheritance-will" rel="nofollow">https://www.npr.org/2023/02/22/1158865140/stray-cats-dixfiel...</a>