Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote:
On 4/26/07, Erik Moeller <erik(a)wikimedia.org>
wrote:
On 4/26/07, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen
<cimonavaro(a)gmail.com> wrote:
However the version of the mission statement
linked from that post,
which you suggest adopting "without objection", is definitely _not_
the one you have now adopted officially.
True - more edits happened after that
announcement & we did some final
tweaking on the Board-level (e.g. we had a brief discussion about
whether we want "neutral" in there or not, and decided in favor).
In fact, I find it hard to say how anyone could claim that the further
emendations made were in fact made "in consultation" with the
community or had any serious review by it at all. So to me it appears
that those "edits" and "tweaking on the board-level" largely
by-passed
approval by the community, even by ommission to comment, since they
were not submitted for even dissaproval after the call for instating
the unstable-mission statement as it then stood.
It still
has the language "free licence" which I personally would think
would
implicitly (if not explicitly) mean "free
content available in formats
under free
licences"
There are plenty of open
source decoders for patented file formats, so
that wouldn't necessarily be clear enough. One can always make up
phrases such as "unfettered file formats" and explain them elsewhere.
I'm generally supportive of incorporating a free&open format clause,
as I think the issue is becoming very hot with Windows Vista's
built-in DRM malware, the MP3 lawsuit, and so on.
In my opinion this is simply not good enough. If you are of the
opinion that we do _not_ need to specify that we are *only* interested
in keeping the *content* under a free licence, why "clarify" the
sentence by adding that specific word "content" there, when a
reasonable reading - and I do think my reading is reasonable - will
contend that adding "content" in there is a specific disinclusion of a
requirement for free formats, and thus a radical shift in policy.
I genuinely hope you are not being disingenous in suggesting that we
"incorporate" language - in the future - to say we are for free
formats. The language as it stood, if not clear, certainly supported
what was already long standing practise of our projects. So it is in
my view very much inaccurate to say that it would be an innovation to
add such language, when much simpler would be to not add the confusing
term "content" there in the first place.
I do infact urge the board to reconsider their position, and
specifically would urge the community to voice whether they wish to
*only* have free "content" or whether that is a too limited phrasing.
--
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]]
I do not think anyone can reasonably claim that the change came as a
total surprise. The issue of updating the mission statement has been
mentionned as early as october 2006.
I do believe that the current mission statement is an "improvement"
compared to the original one.
For reference, the old one
The general purpose and objectives of the Foundation shall be the
following: Wikimedia Foundation is dedicated to the development and
maintenance of online free, open content encyclopedias, collections of
quotations, textbooks and other collections of documents, information,
and other informational databases in all the languages of the world that
will be distributed free of charge to the public under a free
documentation license such as the Free Documentation License written by
the Free Software Foundation Inc. at
http://www.fsf.org or similar
licensing scheme, see
http://www.wikimedia.org. The goals of the
foundation are to encourage the further growth and development of open
content, social sofware WikiWiki-based projects (see
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki) and to provide the full contents of
those projects to the public free of charge. In addition to managing the
already developed multilingual general encyclopedia and almanac named
Wikipedia, (
http://www.wikipedia.org) there is a multi-language
dictionary and thesaurus named Wiktionary, an encyclopedia of quotations
named Wikiquote, a collection of e-book resources aimed specifically
toward students (such as textbooks and annotated public domain books)
named Wikibooks and a collection of source works called Wikisource;
other projects are envisioned. The Foundation also manages the
operations of the largely dormant Nupedia project (which is not a wiki
but is open content).
The new one
The mission of the Wikimedia Foundation is to empower and engage people
around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free
license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and
globally.
In collaboration with a network of chapters, the Foundation provides the
essential infrastructure and an organizational framework for the support
and development of multilingual wiki projects and other endeavors which
serve this mission. The Foundation will make and keep useful information
from its projects available on the Internet free of charge, in perpetuity.
Now, no one is claiming the new one is perfect. Kat herself is not fully
happy with it. I am not 100% happy either, even if I prefer it to the
previous one. For example, I am embarassed by the restriction caused by
the use of the words "educational content", because wikinews is more
about "informational content" than about "educational content".
However, the previous statement basically limited ourselves to be wiki
projects hosting providers (is dedicated to the development and
maintenance. To encourage the further growth and development of open
content, social sofware WikiWiki-based projects and to provide the full
contents of those projects to the public free of charge).
Do you really think this is ONLY what we want to be ? That this is ONLY
what we want to do ? Being host providers ?
I do not think so.
I think many of us also wants the Foundation to push the distribution
and the dissemination of content beyond online. I think many of us also
wants to be freedom advocates. I think many of us want to develop a
global awareness, partly thanks to the collaboration with the chapters.
All this was not in the previous statement.
We wondered whether to wait again till everyone is 100% happy (which may
be an unreachable dream), or to update the statement to better fit what
we think the Foundation is about. Some of you have noticed that we are
not always very quick to do things and to take decisions
(understatement). I do believe that when we are "reasonably" happy, we
should avoid waiting forever to take a decision. In particular for
issues which can be changed in the future.
I will add that whilst we knew that Kat was not fully happy with it, the
call for comment and participation did not provide much feedback, so we
had the reasonable expectation that the change was okay for most.
Hence the decision to update it.
Now, this is not graved in stone. You want to discuss it ? Discuss it.
Put a new version on meta. Call for feedback. Get a new agreement. No
problem. Once a new version seems to be reasonably approved and
preferable to the current new version, it may be updated in the bylaws.
Elections are a perfect time to do that. Please do be an actor on this.
As for me, I think that this statement is 90% good. In comparison, staff
situation is maybe 60% good. Governance is perhaps 30% good. I prefer
focusing my attention on what is really really broken, than getting a
90% satisfaction to 95%. But do keep the discussion open please Cimon.
Ant