On Sun, Feb 14, 2016 at 11:37 PM, Lodewijk lodewijk@effeietsanders.org wrote:
that is a perfectly fine opinion to hold, thanks for sharing. However, the WMF should, in my opinion, only make political statements like severing ties with an organisation that offers something that is useful to the editing community, either when legally obligated, or when there is an overwhelming consensus.
I don't sense such overwhelming consensus just yet.
Having connection with Elsevier by WMF and not having "overwhelming consensus" between us on this issue -- after Elsevier started litigation against Sci-Hub -- are highly hypocritical positions of WMF and Wikimedia movement.
Similar litigation produced the death of Aaron Swartz. In his case, it was JSTOR, which initiated the trial.
Fortunately, WMF didn't make any deal with JSTOR but with Elsevier, as it would be direct attack on Aaron's legacy.
Until few months ago, connection with Elsevier could have been tolerated as edgy, but useful. However, we are now in completely different situation. I hear *our* friends are under high pressure because of this and I just hope all of them are more emotionally tough than Aaron was.
Now, hypocritical people all over Wikimedia movement think it's fine to tolerate such connection. Because it doesn't hurt us and they are giving us cookies. It hurts just people belonging to our wider movement, whom we accidentally know. Why should we care about them?
Besides being legally obligated or having overwhelming consensus, I suppose we have some values, some moral obligations and backbone.