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