On Fri, Jan 23, 2009 at 3:31 PM, Gregory Kohs thekohser@gmail.com wrote:
It would appear that nobody is concerned about giving the landlord a leg up on ITS for-profit competitors by supplying them in particular with a ready feed of intellectual capital in the form of the friendly Stanton-funded developers?
All the changes are going to be open-source, and the development process will be open. I can't see why you would object to Wikimedia collaborating with one of the largest end-users of MediaWiki on improving the software.
I can't see what the claimed conflict of interest is, either. Did anyone involved in the decision, from Wikimedia's side, have any connections to Wikia? So far both Brion Vibber and Ting Chen have said that it was the best offer, and neither of them is or ever has been affiliated with Wikia in any way to my knowledge.
If there's no conflict of interest, then what grounds are there for suggesting any wrongdoing? If the deal is good for Wikia, why should Wikimedia care one way or the other, if it was the best offer from their perspective? So good for Wikia, they offered the best terms and might get better access because of it.