Indeed, ad hoc cooperations are happening all over the place behind the scenes. Some more examples where there was no "top down" decision making process involved:
- GerardM has managed to secure funding (5000 EUR) for the implementation of Wikidata as part of MediaWiki independently of any board actions. This project is now moving forward.
- TheWorldForum.org is copying stories from Wikinews after I pointed them to it. This has allowed us to be indirectly indexed by news.google.com and has led to Wikinews stories being on the frontpage there multiple times already.
- Many, many Wikipedians have individually gone out to obtain permission for photos, images, sounds, or even entire databases. For example, Mark (Raul654) obtained permission to put a piano performance of Johann Pachelbel's Canon under the GFDL:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Pachelbel%27s_Canon.ogg (Very much worth listening to, by the way.)
- I asked SciScoop.com to license their stories under CC-BY-SA for re-use on Wikinews, and they agreed to do so. I have already submitted Wikinews stories there, and they were accepted. I achieved the same result with Steve Aftergood's Secrecy Newsletter on classified information.
I could cite many more examples. And, of course, I could also cite many examples where such cooperations didn't happen, but people tried to make them happen -- those are also worth noting, because success can only come from trying. Perhaps at one point we should compile a global list of these, so we know who our friends and bridges are.
I absolutely agree with you that one beautiful thing about Wikimedia is that the principles of maximizing individual freedom are not limited to the editing of articles. Congratulations for the Yahoo! deal, I hope that the shortcuts will soon be available in all language editions.
All best,
Erik