[Foundation-l] foundation-l Digest, Vol 80, Issue 72

[Craig Franklin]

I strongly suspect I'm being trolled, so I won't waste too much of my time
responding to this, but if you think that Mike's salary is extravagant, what
is your alternative proposal?  What's a fair remuneration, in your eyes, for
a legal counsel or CFO?  Should they give their services (full time) to the
foundation on a volunteer basis?  It would be lovely if we lived in some
post-scarcity world where this was possible, or where a legal expert on the
staff was not required, but for now the reality is that to attract talent
you have to offer competitive remuneration.  As has being pointed out, Mike
has been working for less than what a just-graduated attorney could expect
to make in a law firm; he's been extremely generous to WMF and the community
by giving his time to them at the salary that he has.  If Mike and the other
WMF senior staff were interested in profiteering, they could do so far more
quickly and easily by going and working for a big city law or accounting
firm.

Cheers,
Craig Franklin


>Thank you everybody for explaining your views.
>Most of the US inhabitants who answered me seem to be living and believing
in a hierarchical and competitive world where the highest ranked ones- who
are praised as gods - take from the lowest ones - who are just good enough
to give their money and effort. As a matter of fact, their society seems
>organized to maximize money and it is echoed in their opinion about how to
manage this huge collaborative effort about knowledge called Wikipedia.

>This conditioned acceptance - conditioned in the sense that it seems
natural and the only imaginable solution - reflects a strong, current,
ubiquitous, western, capitalist, materialist and proprietary cultural bias.

>The alternatives are infinite, though. I would like to know what you think
of complementarity, creativity, liberty, conviviality, sharing, and
optimizing (instead of maximizing) for example. Are they completely out of
your scope, out of your hopes and wishes?

>My understanding of the Social Contract of Debian that Milos mentioned [1]
is not as a legal policies but as ethical policies. I don't feel it has been
properly discussed yet.

>[1]: http://www.debian.org/social_contract