Brion, are you aware of any WMF tech work aimed specifically at helping
large for-profits engage with our projects? Andreas mentioned a
side-project for Amazon.
Regardless of specific instances, in principle, would that be a reasonable
place to invest general donation revenue, or should we get the for-profits
to fund such work if it arises?
On Monday, 29 February 2016, Brion Vibber <bvibber(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
On Sunday, February 28, 2016, Andreas Kolbe
<jayen466(a)gmail.com
<javascript:;>> wrote:
Jimmy,
I think the first step is for the Foundation to be more open and
transparent about what work it is actually doing for commercial re-users,
and to announce such work proactively to both donors and the community.
There should be a dedicated space where such information is collected and
available to the public. Major developments should be announced on the
Wikimedia blog.
If some engineering team does work *specifically* for Amazon Kindle,
Amazon
Echo, Google Play, Siri etc., then in my view the
companies concerned
should pay for that work, or the work should be left to a for-profit
contractor. It should not be paid for by donors.
What non-hypothetical work are you referring to?
{{cn}}
-- brion
Donors do not give money to the Foundation so it
can flood the knowledge
market with a free product that a handful of companies then earn billions
from.
As for API use, if there are *generic* APIs that multiple commercial
re-users can benefit from, then they should be charged according to their
usage, with small users operating below a certain threshold being exempt
from payment.
Lastly, we should not seek world domination. :) It's unhealthy,
especially
in the world of information and knowledge. Prices
should be high enough
that some competition is possible.
Andreas
On Sun, Feb 28, 2016 at 5:32 PM, Jimmy Wales <jimmywales(a)ymail.com
<javascript:;>
<javascript:;>> wrote:
>
> On the very specific topic of donor funding going to help commercial
> re-users, we've had some interesting but inconclusive board discussions
> about this topic. Despite that he takes every opportunity to attack
me,
> and surely it will disappoint him to know,
but my general view is 100%
> in agreement with him on the core issue - where commercial re-users are
> getting enormous value from our work, they should be paying for the
> engineering resources required for their support.
>
> Here are two push-backs on the idea that I do think are deserving of
> serious consideration:
>
> 1. Part of our core mission as a community is free access - will a "pay
> for service" model for APIs for commercial re-users alienate a
> significant portion of the community? Does requiring some to pay while
> others get it free raise questions similar to those around "net
> neutrality"?
>
> As a historical footnote, there was a deal many years ago with
>
Answers.com to give them access to an API which they used to present
our
> content alongside many other resources.
They paid for that - not a
huge
> amount, but it was meaningful back in those
days. I don't recall this
> being particularly controversial.
>
> 2. In many cases it may be too simplistic to simply say "a company is
> benefiting, so they should pay". The point is that *we* also benefit,
> from increased readership for example, from our work making it to end
> users as technology changes and as the way people get information
> changes. There is certainly a situation where setting too high a price
> would simply push commercial re-users to not use our content at all, so
> sensible pricing would be key. And with real serious ongoing analysis,
> the right price could still be "free" even if we in principle charge.
>
> ----
>
> For me, despite those being real concerns, I come down firmly on the
> side of being careful about falling into a trap of doing lots of
> expensive work for commercial re-users without having them pay. I
don't
> actually think we do a lot of that right
now. What I'd like to see is
> more of it, and I'm pretty agnostic about whether that's in the form of
> "self-financing cottage industries" or a "separate for-profit
arm" or
> within the current engineering organization. I can see arguments for
> any of those.
>
>
>
>
> On 2/28/16 8:02 AM, Andreas Kolbe wrote:
> > On Sun, Feb 28, 2016 at 3:24 PM, Dariusz Jemielniak <
darekj(a)alk.edu.pl <javascript:;>
<javascript:;>>
> > wrote:
> >
> > We COULD outsource most of our tech (I'm not supporting this, I'm
just
>>
giving perspective).
>>
>
>
> One thing I've been wondering about of late is how much donor-funded
the
> > work the WMF is doing that is primarily designed to support
commercial
> > re-users.
> >
> > The other day, I read an Engineering report on the Wikimedia blog
that
> > spoke of the Wikipedia Zero team doing
"side project" work for Amazon
> > Kindle and Google Play.
> >
> > I was thinking, Why are donors paying for that? – especially at a
time
> when
> > the Foundation worries about being able to sustain fundraising
growth.
>
> Wikimedia content is worth billions. Wikidata in particular has huge
> potential value for commercial re-users.[1] So have the link-ups
between
> Wikipedia and Amazon, Google, Bing etc.
>
> It's clear that even in 2008, the Foundation was inundated with
"multiple
> > product-specific pitches" from Google.[2] I imagine the breadth and
> number
> > of these pitches from Silicon Valley companies can only have
increased
> > since then.
> >
> > Sure, Wikimedia is committed to using its donated funds to make
content
>
freely available under an open licence, but does that mean donors
should
> also be paying for programming work that is
primarily designed to
support
> commercial re-users?
>
> That work could be done by self-financing cottage industries built up
by
> Wikimedians, working for profit, or even a
for-profit arm of the
> Foundation. All the Foundation would have to do would be to provide
basic
> > documentation; the rest could be left to the open market.
> >
> > The astonishing thing to me is that there seems to be very little or
no
>
publicity and transparency from the WMF about developments in this
area.
> For instance, I was unable to find any WMF
communication about
Wikipedia
> > Smart Lookup being integrated in the Amazon Kindle (something Amazon
> > announced in 2014),[3] even though WMF teams clearly have done
> programming
> > work on this. You'd have thought having Wikipedia search embedded in
a
> > major product like the Kindle is a big
thing, worthy of a
> community-facing
> > announcement?
> >
> > In short, I think the WMF should collate and publicise more
information
> > about commercial re-use applications,
and be transparent about the
work
> > it's doing to support such re-use.
Maybe there is another
"transparency
>
gap" here.[4]
>
> And if there is any work that the Foundation is currently doing that
> primarily benefits commercial re-users, then I think it should stop
doing
> > that for free (= at donors' expense), and allow for-profit
contractors
to
spring up
and pitch for that work. That would allow the non-profit
foundation to focus on user-facing improvements.
Andreas
[1]
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/02/25/wikidata_turns_the_world_into_a_dat…
[2] See Sue Gardner's email quoted on the last two
pages of
http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/sandberg.pdf
[3]
http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/forums/kindleqna/ref=cs_hc_k_m_oldes…
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Foundation_transparency_gap#…
> >
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