Anthony wrote:
On 9/22/07, Florence Devouard
<Anthere9(a)yahoo.com> wrote:
The issue is that we both benefit from staying
separate from an
organization point of view, both from fiscal perspective and from a
communication perspective
Fiscal: *this* belongs to this organization, *that* belongs to that
organization. From an auditing perspective, having to identify who
bought the staples is a nightmare (and more seriously, on whether some
inappropriate arrangements are occuring between two organizations).
I wasn't suggesting that they share the exact same office space.
Separate units and everything, of course. Inappropriate arrangements
can occur regardless of whether you're literally next door or a few
miles away.
They are welcome as sponsors
Communication:
we spent the entire past year trying to make it clear
that the two organizations were unrelated. It is not to our benefit to
be confused with Wikia.
Certainly not. But I don't see how them donating office space would
cause any more of such confusion.
I prefer that Sue chooses the office space she thinks is the best for
our needs, and feel free to move to another as soon as she thinks it is
necessary. No ties is much better.
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.
Well, there still a lot of person-overlap, between the board, the
advisory board, employees, arb com, etc. And there's still the whole
interwiki linking mess. And now, they're gonna be in the same
metropolitan area (which surely will help with the whole
people-overlap part).
Whilst there are two overlaps on the board (with all due
COI
documentation, and lack of vote in cases of conflicts), I do not know of
any overlap within the staff (can you cite a name ?). I see not why
Angela being on the advboard implies that there is a relationship.
Last, whether there are people both working at Wikia and at the arbcom
is completely irrelevant to the Foundation itself.
The foundation doesn't care about the arbcom? That seems...really wrong.
Do not put words in my mouth that I did not say Anthony.
If one staff member of Microsoft was also a volunteer on the arbcom,
would it tie us to Microsoft somehow ?
As I said
earlier, the days of Michael on the board are counted. He does
not have time for this role any more, so this will no more be an issue.
Jimbo... though at Wikia... is hardly in SF himself. Besides, I see no
reason why he would go to the office on a regular basis. That's not his
role any more. In short, there is no reason for an overlap.
And I would not be in favor of ANY overlap for the reasons above
mentionned.
What do you mean by that? You'd prefer for Jimbo to resign from one
or the other organization? If so, yeah, that'd be a good start.
No overlap at the organization level. Jimbo is *very* careful to avoid
any conflict of interest, and abstain from voting or even giving opinion
each time there might be one. It would be a very bad idea for Jimbo to
quit any of the two organizations :-)
Combined with Michael's resignation and removal of
Wikia from the
interwiki link table (or at least from the special nofollow
treatment), and then maybe a statement that there are no relationships
between Wikia and the WMF could be taken seriously (I don't know for
sure, but maybe). But as of now, it's just not a serious statement.
/me shakes head
At least this "relationship" would be to the
benefit of the WMF.
I disagree with that statement.
It seems you were confused as to what I was suggesting, though. If it
was just two offices next door to each other, would it be OK? I think
it would be, but maybe you're right that it wouldn't.
What you suggested was not two offices next to each other, but them
donating office space to us.