On Wed, Jul 24, 2013 at 11:38 AM, David Cuenca <dacuetu(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Erik, if the WMF is supposed to be a global
organization there is no need
to concentrate all (physical) resources in SF, unless the WMF is acting as
the US chapter, then it could be understood that it has to restrict its
geographic presence. As I see it, for example there is no impedement to
have a WMF Asia in any chosen country of that region with an engineering
department dependent on the WMF.
I would like to hear from the legal team what are the challenges of having
a distributed presence. It is not a new problem, many international
organizations and companies have gone through the process, so there should
be no need to invent new solutions.
I'm not a lawyer, so I won't pretend to speak expertly to the legal
situations, but in my time on the Communications team I've seen several
concrete examples of where it's very valuable to be far from a conflict
physically and situated in the U.S. There's the disputed Kashmir maps in
India issue (Google and other outfits with offices in those countries have
given in to
demands<http://www.businessinsider.com/most-controversial-places-on-goog…
local authorities to alter maps in a number of cases). What kind of
pressure would we get for this file if we had offices in India?
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:India_disputed_areas_map.svg
The most recent example was with the DCRI in France. Had we had offices in
France, I'm not sure the outcome would have been the same; I imagine our
leverage would have been compromised.
Of course, there are significant challenges with U.S. laws around
copyright, so it's not a panacea, certainly. But I do think it's a very
complicated issue.
As you say, there is international
staff already, the only thing missing would be a space to attract even more
talent while keeping the costs down. Not everyone wants to work from home.
Obviuously an external assessment would be necessary to establish what is
the size necessary for that to happen and if the benefits outweight the
costs.
As for chapters building engineering capacity I see it as something
positive, unfortunately only at the reach of the biggest chapters, and with
a very local (contry-level) organizational focus, which doesn't help in
creating an international work environement.
Micru
On Wed, Jul 24, 2013 at 12:30 PM, Erik Moeller <erik(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
On Wed, Jul 24, 2013 at 6:44 AM, David Cuenca
<dacuetu(a)gmail.com> wrote:
I don't agree with Romaine's view that it
is a cultural problem, but it
is
true that the WMF management seems to prefer to
have all development
concentrated in SF.
Hardly. About half of WMF's engineering staff is distributed (both
inside and outside the US), and we've encouraged and supported
software engineering efforts by chapters. I'd actually love to see
much more of that happen, and see other chapters build engineering
capacity over time. It's legally challenging for WMF to have office
presence in multiple jurisdictions, but having independent orgs like
Wikimedia chapters build out development teams doesn't suffer from
that challenge.
We're an open source project; being able to decentralize effort is our
strength. The caveat I would add is that you actually need to ensure
that complex projects are resourced sufficiently. Wikidata is a
success in part because it's a well-resourced, well-managed team, and
the partnership in areas where WMF does need to help was carefully
negotiated.
So, which other chapters are up for building out serious software
engineering capacity?
Erik
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