On 9/22/07, Ben McIlwain <cydeweys(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
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Thomas Dalton wrote:
On 22/09/2007, Andrew Gray
<shimgray(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Yeah. Financially speaking, moving outside the US
would be a big hit
(now and in the near future) simply due to exchange rates, if nothing
else.
I don't see why exchange rates would make much difference. The WMF
recieves donations in all kinds of currencies - just spend the pounds
in the UK and the dollars in the US. Exchange rates only matter if you
are exchanging currency.
That's not quite how it works. The donations that
are coming in aren't
going to be changing, so WMF will still be getting most donations in
USD. Except, because of the poor exchange rate, it is much more
expensive to do just about everything in the UK, including renting
flats, renting office space, buying food, buying bandwidth, etc. The
donations wouldn't go nearly as far.
Bottom line is that the cost of living in London, in US dollars, is
expensive. Of course, the cost of living in San Francisco, in US
dollars, is also expensive. It's not really an exchange rate thing so
much as a cost of living thing. A weaker dollar will lead to higher
rent in San Francisco too, although maybe it'll take a few months to
kick in. Anyone have the cost per square foot for office space in San
Francisco vs. London?
Wikia is in the San Francisco area. Any chance they'd be willing to
donate some office space to Wikipedia?
Even if they had, we should not accept it (and I doubt they would
propose). We have gone through great efforts to fully separate from them
and we now have no more financial/legal/technical relationships. Only
love relationships, which is just fine.
Ant