First, an announcement, then some thoughts
We just hired Vishal Pattel as part-time business developer. The positions responsabilities are:
1) Identify and develop market strategies 2) Generate ideas and initiatives that capitalize on existing and prospective partner strengths 3) Consistently build a pipeline of new, revenue generating opportunities 4) Prepare written presentations, reports, and term sheets 5) Assist in contract negotiations 6) Assist with other tasks as needed(*)
(*) to be added to any staff member job description by default :-)
Vishal is already in the office, since he has been a part time intern since january 2007. We had expected to fill in this position in the future - not considered as urgent as the ED or legal coordinator positions - but it became more urgent after Danny's departure. I expect Vishal will both relieve other staff members from certain tasks, and focus all his attention on an area which was not always treated as a major area.
Immediate and very specific tasks he will be in charge, amongst other tasks related to the position, are : * report on all business deals we currently are in (who, what, when, how much). * analyze the price asked for certain services and implement an increase if suitable * coordinate sponsorship for Wikimania * follow up on brand marketing proposal * be the general contact person for all the various (and sometimes really amazing) business deals proposed to the Foundation
--------
Business... is not a simple matter.
I realized recently that the message we were consistently giving to the press was that we basically got all of our revenue from donations.
But...first of all, are we sure it is true ? Do you know how much of our revenue comes from donations, how much comes from grants, how much comes from services, how much come from cafepress, how much come from pure brand business ? I know the figures from last year, though financial statements did not make the difference between services and brand marketing for example. The values were very low anyway. I have some estimates of some values for the current year. But I do not have clear precise data month by month. And I know the data is changing very rapidly. I do not think it is something like 99% donations, 1% the rest of the revenue.
-------
Second, regardless of how much we get from various sources, it make sense to know which message we want to get out. Do we want our public to hear only (or mostly) that we manage thanks to their donations ? Or do we also want potential business partners to hear that they can also make business with us ? If we want the second, we must not only have a proper frame to do business (such as a nicely working cafe press, or a good wap service), but also make it known that we want to do so. As with an information kit different from the press kit.
-------
Third, it makes sense to exactly know which type of business we want (or we can) to get into. In terms in revenue, aside from the regular donations and grants, here is what we can get right now
* income from sales from cafe press. This revenue is partly business, partly promotion. We do not run the cafepress exclusively to earn money, but also because it is pretty cool to have a wikimedia mug or a wikipedia tee-shirt.
* data services: afaik, currently, datafeed for website and a wap service (extremely basic...). Arguably, this is pure business, or a mix of business/distribution
* brand with content distribution deal: we do not want to directly distribute offline versions of our content, and even less to make people pay for that. Legally risky. But we are happy others are doing, and when they run a business on this, we make a deal for brand use. Example, production of a DVD with Wikipedia content on it; in such case, we collect a small fee corresponding to the use of the logo on the DVD jacket. In such case, it is not only a business deal. It is business, but it is also part of our mission as it allows content to further disseminate.
* pure brand deals: very few were done till now; That might be typically the Cisco deal, where a video used our logo and some money was collected. At a much larger scale, we could envision larger impact, with toys, computer equipment, etc... this is just to get money.
* I mention advertisement. It is pure business. We do not do it, but it is mentionned regularly, and I think that for the sake of it, we should consider one day having a study done to see how much it would bring in, and how much negative impact it would have (not only on community mood, but also probably in donations decrease).
* on-site services, to improve the user experience. We might imagine a system of print-on-demand on the website itself, with a fee per printed/shipped book. Right now, there are few, if not no services of this type.
* arguably, I will mention here sponsorship. Because sponsorship is largely an exchange of money with promotion of a third party.
I expect there are other ways to make business and to collect some cash. Which ones would you suggest ?
Each of these systems has advantage and drawbacks. I above mentionned the advertisement system, but there are others which might be controversial. For example, if we have wikipedia logo printed on a game of trivial pursuit, will you be happy, or not ? If Microsoft is Wikimania sponsor, will you be happy, or not ?
Community can very largely provide input here.
-------
fourth, legal frame. Are they deals we can not make practically or reasonably ? Or deals we simply should not go into ? Or deals we should not get into above a certain figure of income for tax reasons ? If we sell the right to use the brand, can we defend it is a brand and it is ours at the place where we want to make the deal ? (ie, were the tms secured ? ) All questions difficult right now with no legal counsel though.
-------
Fifth, much mentionned in the past few days. Brand precisely. Public perception of a brand. Whether to unify our brand or not. Whether to try to go toward a more unified appearance accross all websites, or not. Of course, we can get counselling from professionals on this, but community input will be unvaluable.
-------
The revenue we right now get from business is largely inferior to what we could get, and I expect it will grow much larger in the coming year. But before it really become so, we have significant challenges in front of us. I hope that Vishal will become an important piece of that challenge and invite him to involve the community to deal with all this.
Ant
Congrats to Vishal Pattel! I know the staff will make him feel welcome. :)
Casey Brown Cbrown1023
-----Original Message----- From: foundation-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:foundation-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Florence Devouard Sent: Thursday, May 17, 2007 8:16 PM To: foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: [Foundation-l] [announcement] new staff member in businessdevelopment
First, an announcement, then some thoughts
We just hired Vishal Pattel as part-time business developer. The positions responsabilities are:
1) Identify and develop market strategies 2) Generate ideas and initiatives that capitalize on existing and prospective partner strengths 3) Consistently build a pipeline of new, revenue generating opportunities 4) Prepare written presentations, reports, and term sheets 5) Assist in contract negotiations 6) Assist with other tasks as needed(*)
(*) to be added to any staff member job description by default :-)
Vishal is already in the office, since he has been a part time intern since january 2007. We had expected to fill in this position in the future - not considered as urgent as the ED or legal coordinator positions - but it became more urgent after Danny's departure. I expect Vishal will both relieve other staff members from certain tasks, and focus all his attention on an area which was not always treated as a major area.
Immediate and very specific tasks he will be in charge, amongst other tasks related to the position, are : * report on all business deals we currently are in (who, what, when, how much). * analyze the price asked for certain services and implement an increase if suitable * coordinate sponsorship for Wikimania * follow up on brand marketing proposal * be the general contact person for all the various (and sometimes really amazing) business deals proposed to the Foundation
--------
Business... is not a simple matter.
I realized recently that the message we were consistently giving to the press was that we basically got all of our revenue from donations.
But...first of all, are we sure it is true ? Do you know how much of our revenue comes from donations, how much comes from grants, how much comes from services, how much come from cafepress, how much come from pure brand business ? I know the figures from last year, though financial statements did not make the difference between services and brand marketing for example. The values were very low anyway. I have some estimates of some values for the current year. But I do not have clear precise data month by month. And I know the data is changing very rapidly. I do not think it is something like 99% donations, 1% the rest of the revenue.
-------
Second, regardless of how much we get from various sources, it make sense to know which message we want to get out. Do we want our public to hear only (or mostly) that we manage thanks to their donations ? Or do we also want potential business partners to hear that they can also make business with us ? If we want the second, we must not only have a proper frame to do business (such as a nicely working cafe press, or a good wap service), but also make it known that we want to do so. As with an information kit different from the press kit.
-------
Third, it makes sense to exactly know which type of business we want (or we can) to get into. In terms in revenue, aside from the regular donations and grants, here is what we can get right now
* income from sales from cafe press. This revenue is partly business, partly promotion. We do not run the cafepress exclusively to earn money, but also because it is pretty cool to have a wikimedia mug or a wikipedia tee-shirt.
* data services: afaik, currently, datafeed for website and a wap service (extremely basic...). Arguably, this is pure business, or a mix of business/distribution
* brand with content distribution deal: we do not want to directly distribute offline versions of our content, and even less to make people pay for that. Legally risky. But we are happy others are doing, and when they run a business on this, we make a deal for brand use. Example, production of a DVD with Wikipedia content on it; in such case, we collect a small fee corresponding to the use of the logo on the DVD jacket. In such case, it is not only a business deal. It is business, but it is also part of our mission as it allows content to further disseminate.
* pure brand deals: very few were done till now; That might be typically the Cisco deal, where a video used our logo and some money was collected. At a much larger scale, we could envision larger impact, with toys, computer equipment, etc... this is just to get money.
* I mention advertisement. It is pure business. We do not do it, but it is mentionned regularly, and I think that for the sake of it, we should consider one day having a study done to see how much it would bring in, and how much negative impact it would have (not only on community mood, but also probably in donations decrease).
* on-site services, to improve the user experience. We might imagine a system of print-on-demand on the website itself, with a fee per printed/shipped book. Right now, there are few, if not no services of this type.
* arguably, I will mention here sponsorship. Because sponsorship is largely an exchange of money with promotion of a third party.
I expect there are other ways to make business and to collect some cash. Which ones would you suggest ?
Each of these systems has advantage and drawbacks. I above mentionned the advertisement system, but there are others which might be controversial. For example, if we have wikipedia logo printed on a game of trivial pursuit, will you be happy, or not ? If Microsoft is Wikimania sponsor, will you be happy, or not ?
Community can very largely provide input here.
-------
fourth, legal frame. Are they deals we can not make practically or reasonably ? Or deals we simply should not go into ? Or deals we should not get into above a certain figure of income for tax reasons ? If we sell the right to use the brand, can we defend it is a brand and it is ours at the place where we want to make the deal ? (ie, were the tms secured ? ) All questions difficult right now with no legal counsel though.
-------
Fifth, much mentionned in the past few days. Brand precisely. Public perception of a brand. Whether to unify our brand or not. Whether to try to go toward a more unified appearance accross all websites, or not. Of course, we can get counselling from professionals on this, but community input will be unvaluable.
-------
The revenue we right now get from business is largely inferior to what we could get, and I expect it will grow much larger in the coming year. But before it really become so, we have significant challenges in front of us. I hope that Vishal will become an important piece of that challenge and invite him to involve the community to deal with all this.
Ant
_______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Important position, and very necessary.
Rock on Vishal.
Özgür
On 5/17/07, Florence Devouard Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
First, an announcement, then some thoughts
We just hired Vishal Pattel as part-time business developer. The positions responsabilities are:
- Identify and develop market strategies
- Generate ideas and initiatives that capitalize on existing and
prospective partner strengths 3) Consistently build a pipeline of new, revenue generating opportunities 4) Prepare written presentations, reports, and term sheets 5) Assist in contract negotiations 6) Assist with other tasks as needed(*)
(*) to be added to any staff member job description by default :-)
Vishal is already in the office, since he has been a part time intern since january 2007. We had expected to fill in this position in the future - not considered as urgent as the ED or legal coordinator positions - but it became more urgent after Danny's departure. I expect Vishal will both relieve other staff members from certain tasks, and focus all his attention on an area which was not always treated as a major area.
Immediate and very specific tasks he will be in charge, amongst other tasks related to the position, are :
- report on all business deals we currently are in (who, what, when, how
much).
- analyze the price asked for certain services and implement an increase
if suitable
- coordinate sponsorship for Wikimania
- follow up on brand marketing proposal
- be the general contact person for all the various (and sometimes
really amazing) business deals proposed to the Foundation
Business... is not a simple matter.
I realized recently that the message we were consistently giving to the press was that we basically got all of our revenue from donations.
But...first of all, are we sure it is true ? Do you know how much of our revenue comes from donations, how much comes from grants, how much comes from services, how much come from cafepress, how much come from pure brand business ? I know the figures from last year, though financial statements did not make the difference between services and brand marketing for example. The values were very low anyway. I have some estimates of some values for the current year. But I do not have clear precise data month by month. And I know the data is changing very rapidly. I do not think it is something like 99% donations, 1% the rest of the revenue.
Second, regardless of how much we get from various sources, it make sense to know which message we want to get out. Do we want our public to hear only (or mostly) that we manage thanks to their donations ? Or do we also want potential business partners to hear that they can also make business with us ? If we want the second, we must not only have a proper frame to do business (such as a nicely working cafe press, or a good wap service), but also make it known that we want to do so. As with an information kit different from the press kit.
Third, it makes sense to exactly know which type of business we want (or we can) to get into. In terms in revenue, aside from the regular donations and grants, here is what we can get right now
- income from sales from cafe press. This revenue is partly business,
partly promotion. We do not run the cafepress exclusively to earn money, but also because it is pretty cool to have a wikimedia mug or a wikipedia tee-shirt.
- data services: afaik, currently, datafeed for website and a wap
service (extremely basic...). Arguably, this is pure business, or a mix of business/distribution
- brand with content distribution deal: we do not want to directly
distribute offline versions of our content, and even less to make people pay for that. Legally risky. But we are happy others are doing, and when they run a business on this, we make a deal for brand use. Example, production of a DVD with Wikipedia content on it; in such case, we collect a small fee corresponding to the use of the logo on the DVD jacket. In such case, it is not only a business deal. It is business, but it is also part of our mission as it allows content to further disseminate.
- pure brand deals: very few were done till now; That might be typically
the Cisco deal, where a video used our logo and some money was collected. At a much larger scale, we could envision larger impact, with toys, computer equipment, etc... this is just to get money.
- I mention advertisement. It is pure business. We do not do it, but it
is mentionned regularly, and I think that for the sake of it, we should consider one day having a study done to see how much it would bring in, and how much negative impact it would have (not only on community mood, but also probably in donations decrease).
- on-site services, to improve the user experience. We might imagine a
system of print-on-demand on the website itself, with a fee per printed/shipped book. Right now, there are few, if not no services of this type.
- arguably, I will mention here sponsorship. Because sponsorship is
largely an exchange of money with promotion of a third party.
I expect there are other ways to make business and to collect some cash. Which ones would you suggest ?
Each of these systems has advantage and drawbacks. I above mentionned the advertisement system, but there are others which might be controversial. For example, if we have wikipedia logo printed on a game of trivial pursuit, will you be happy, or not ? If Microsoft is Wikimania sponsor, will you be happy, or not ?
Community can very largely provide input here.
fourth, legal frame. Are they deals we can not make practically or reasonably ? Or deals we simply should not go into ? Or deals we should not get into above a certain figure of income for tax reasons ? If we sell the right to use the brand, can we defend it is a brand and it is ours at the place where we want to make the deal ? (ie, were the tms secured ? ) All questions difficult right now with no legal counsel though.
Fifth, much mentionned in the past few days. Brand precisely. Public perception of a brand. Whether to unify our brand or not. Whether to try to go toward a more unified appearance accross all websites, or not. Of course, we can get counselling from professionals on this, but community input will be unvaluable.
The revenue we right now get from business is largely inferior to what we could get, and I expect it will grow much larger in the coming year. But before it really become so, we have significant challenges in front of us. I hope that Vishal will become an important piece of that challenge and invite him to involve the community to deal with all this.
Ant
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
On Fri, 18 May 2007, Florence Devouard wrote:
We just hired Vishal Pattel as part-time business developer.
Nice. <communal welcome to Vishal>
I realized recently that the message we were consistently giving to the press was that we basically got all of our revenue from donations.
But...first of all, are we sure it is true ?
I don't know what "sure" means, since the public Foundation records aren't as transparent as they could be. Does anyone know for sure what the breakdown is?
I will say this: I would bet you a good French dinner every night for a week* that Wikimedia+Wikipedia could raise its entire budget for the next year, if the budget reasons were clear, through donations alone, simply by asking its community for support.
Second, regardless of how much we get from various sources, it make sense to know which message we want to get out. Do we want our public to hear only (or mostly) that we manage thanks to their donations ? Or do we also want potential business partners to hear that they can also make business with us ?
These do not exhaust the options. Do we want the public to hear that their favorite site is sustainable on the good will and voluntary donations of its avid readers? That sends a very powerful message that "supported by your favorite companies and brand-conscious advertisers" does not -- not just a message about *Wikipedia* but a message about our collective global community that is building this tremendous body of knowledge. It drives home strongly the fact that the most invaluable contributions to Wikipedia, millions of hours of editing time and vast subject expertise, are by definition donations from the community,
If we want the second, we must not only have a proper frame to do business (such as a nicely working cafe press, or a good wap service),
There is no reason why we can't say "we manage thanks to public donations. We are also supported in part by these organizations (not because we need their support to survive, but because they like individual contributors think the projects are worth supporting)."
- I mention advertisement. It is pure business. We do not do it, but it
is mentionned regularly, and I think that for the sake of it, we should consider one day having a study done to see how much it would bring in, and how much negative impact it would have (not only on community mood, but also probably in donations decrease).
A pity to put it this way. If there is a need for more funds, please ask the community for them. Until there is a specific need for funds beyond what the community regularly provides, why should one evaluate "how much [advertising] would bring in"? To encourage debates about whether ads are good or bad? Better to spend that community energy debating what the budget should include and how to focus collective priorities...
- arguably, I will mention here sponsorship. Because sponsorship is
largely an exchange of money with promotion of a third party.
How about sponsorship by a hardware provider or ISP, to do away with 80% of the budget in one swift move? That would be a sponsorship worth having, and a real in-kind service provided.
I expect there are other ways to make business and to collect some cash. Which ones would you suggest ?
Is this what our primary focus should be? I would feel better about this if there were specific plans for specific sorts of improvement, such as network development, outreach, language diversification, systemic bias reduction, or infrastructure to reduce recurring maintenance costs.
Fifth, much mentionned in the past few days. Brand precisely. Public perception of a brand. Whether to unify our brand or not. Whether to try to go toward a more unified appearance accross all websites, or not. Of course, we can get counselling from professionals on this, but community input will be unvaluable.
To me, the focus should be on clarifying project goals and purpose and definition -- "brand" -- internally within the community before worrying about how they appear to the rest of the world. Numerous exciting potential projects have foundered in part on a confusion as to what the different goals and cross-purposes of different projects is/should be.
SJ
* I know, this isn't a fair bet, since you may have this already; or may not want seven straight nights of same. Suggest another?
Hoi, Congratulations, Vishal you have a job that needs doing.. I hope for all our sakes you will do a great job.
In his reply Samuel indicates that it is not clear what our needs are and, what we would do with money generated. Let me remind him that at the last fund raiser we were looking for 1,5 million dollars, we got just over 1 million of that. A substantial part of it was acquired because of corporate donations. We are underfunded and understaffed as it is.
Relevant is that the Virgin deal was seen as problematic by some. In equal measure this attitude is problematic because it prevents the funding of our projects in the way they were budgetted in the future.
Now you want to sound confident by making a bet. Consider that you may eat French dinners, but you are offering it to an organisation used to eating spagetti only.
Thanks, Gerard
On 5/18/07, Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com wrote:
On Fri, 18 May 2007, Florence Devouard wrote:
We just hired Vishal Pattel as part-time business developer.
Nice. <communal welcome to Vishal>
I realized recently that the message we were consistently giving to the press was that we basically got all of our revenue from donations.
But...first of all, are we sure it is true ?
I don't know what "sure" means, since the public Foundation records aren't as transparent as they could be. Does anyone know for sure what the breakdown is?
I will say this: I would bet you a good French dinner every night for a week* that Wikimedia+Wikipedia could raise its entire budget for the next year, if the budget reasons were clear, through donations alone, simply by asking its community for support.
Second, regardless of how much we get from various sources, it make sense to know which message we want to get out. Do we want our public to hear only (or mostly) that we manage thanks to their donations ? Or do we also want potential business partners to hear that they can also make business with us ?
These do not exhaust the options. Do we want the public to hear that their favorite site is sustainable on the good will and voluntary donations of its avid readers? That sends a very powerful message that "supported by your favorite companies and brand-conscious advertisers" does not -- not just a message about *Wikipedia* but a message about our collective global community that is building this tremendous body of knowledge. It drives home strongly the fact that the most invaluable contributions to Wikipedia, millions of hours of editing time and vast subject expertise, are by definition donations from the community,
If we want the second, we must not only have a proper frame to do business (such as a nicely working cafe press, or a good wap service),
There is no reason why we can't say "we manage thanks to public donations. We are also supported in part by these organizations (not because we need their support to survive, but because they like individual contributors think the projects are worth supporting)."
- I mention advertisement. It is pure business. We do not do it, but it
is mentionned regularly, and I think that for the sake of it, we should consider one day having a study done to see how much it would bring in, and how much negative impact it would have (not only on community mood, but also probably in donations decrease).
A pity to put it this way. If there is a need for more funds, please ask the community for them. Until there is a specific need for funds beyond what the community regularly provides, why should one evaluate "how much [advertising] would bring in"? To encourage debates about whether ads are good or bad? Better to spend that community energy debating what the budget should include and how to focus collective priorities...
- arguably, I will mention here sponsorship. Because sponsorship is
largely an exchange of money with promotion of a third party.
How about sponsorship by a hardware provider or ISP, to do away with 80% of the budget in one swift move? That would be a sponsorship worth having, and a real in-kind service provided.
I expect there are other ways to make business and to collect some cash. Which ones would you suggest ?
Is this what our primary focus should be? I would feel better about this if there were specific plans for specific sorts of improvement, such as network development, outreach, language diversification, systemic bias reduction, or infrastructure to reduce recurring maintenance costs.
Fifth, much mentionned in the past few days. Brand precisely. Public perception of a brand. Whether to unify our brand or not. Whether to try to go toward a more unified appearance accross all websites, or not. Of course, we can get counselling from professionals on this, but community input will be unvaluable.
To me, the focus should be on clarifying project goals and purpose and definition -- "brand" -- internally within the community before worrying about how they appear to the rest of the world. Numerous exciting potential projects have foundered in part on a confusion as to what the different goals and cross-purposes of different projects is/should be.
SJ
- I know, this isn't a fair bet, since you may have this already; or may
not want seven straight nights of same. Suggest another?
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
GerardM wrote:
Hoi, Congratulations, Vishal you have a job that needs doing.. I hope for all our sakes you will do a great job.
In his reply Samuel indicates that it is not clear what our needs are and, what we would do with money generated. Let me remind him that at the last fund raiser we were looking for 1,5 million dollars, we got just over 1 million of that. A substantial part of it was acquired because of corporate donations. We are underfunded and understaffed as it is.
Relevant is that the Virgin deal was seen as problematic by some. In equal measure this attitude is problematic because it prevents the funding of our projects in the way they were budgetted in the future.
Now you want to sound confident by making a bet. Consider that you may eat French dinners, but you are offering it to an organisation used to eating spagetti only.
Sam and Gerard, please do remember that ... French dinners are expensive in most of the world... but not in France :-)
ant
On Fri, 18 May 2007, Florence Devouard wrote:
GerardM wrote:
In his reply Samuel indicates that it is not clear what our needs are and, what we would do with money generated. Let me remind him that at the last fund raiser we were looking for 1,5 million dollars, we got just over 1 million of that. A substantial part of it was acquired because of corporate donations. We are underfunded and understaffed as it is.
We fundraise less often than we used to, and with less clear urgency. Perhaps there is a relationship... I'm inclined to think so.
Relevant is that the Virgin deal was seen as problematic by some. In equal measure this attitude is problematic because it prevents the funding of our projects in the way they were budgetted in the future.
Let's talk about budgeting for the future, instead of fundraising. There's a productive thread...
Now you want to sound confident by making a bet. Consider that you may eat French dinners, but you are offering it to an organisation used to eating spagetti only.
I was trying to quantify my "sureness" since Ant asked if we were sure. :) I have eaten French dinners, most memoarbly in Avignon, though it has been a very long time. And I was betting on one thing...
Sam and Gerard, please do remember that ... French dinners are expensive in most of the world... but not in France :-)
ant
Indeed (-: See my original footnote.
SJ
On 18/05/07, Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com wrote:
Until there is a specific need for funds beyond what the community regularly provides, why should one evaluate "how much [advertising] would bring in"? To encourage debates about whether ads are good or bad? Better to spend that community energy debating what the budget should include and how to focus collective priorities...
The cynic in me says that a well-written report saying (and proving) that advertising would bring in a pittance and drive donations and goodwill through the ground would be a godsend in silencing any future debates ;-)
Hello,
On 5/18/07, Florence Devouard Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
First, an announcement, then some thoughts
We just hired Vishal Pattel as part-time business developer.
Welcome aboard, Vishal! As GerardM said, you've got a lot on your plate :)
Could someone from the office please review http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Business_Developer so as to launch translation in other languages?
On 5/18/07, Florence Devouard Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
- income from sales from cafe press. This revenue is partly business,
partly promotion. We do not run the cafepress exclusively to earn money, but also because it is pretty cool to have a wikimedia mug or a wikipedia tee-shirt.
"Cool" maybe but not from cafe press.
On 5/17/07, Florence Devouard Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
First, an announcement, then some thoughts
We just hired Vishal Pattel as part-time business developer.
This is horrible. The foundation is having enough trouble trying to run a charity, and now you're trying to run a business on top of that? The chair of the board doesn't even have a good idea where the revenue is coming from, save an old yearly financial statement which admittedly didn't provide enough details?
This is getting pathetic.
Anthony
On 5/18/07, Anthony wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
On 5/17/07, Florence Devouard Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
First, an announcement, then some thoughts
We just hired Vishal Pattel as part-time business developer.
This is horrible. The foundation is having enough trouble trying to run a charity, and now you're trying to run a business on top of that? The chair of the board doesn't even have a good idea where the revenue is coming from, save an old yearly financial statement which admittedly didn't provide enough details?
This is getting pathetic.
Please try to remain calm, okay? We don't need yet another flame war here.
Michael
Anthony
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Anthony wrote:
On 5/17/07, Florence Devouard Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
First, an announcement, then some thoughts
We just hired Vishal Pattel as part-time business developer.
This is horrible. The foundation is having enough trouble trying to run a charity, and now you're trying to run a business on top of that? The chair of the board doesn't even have a good idea where the revenue is coming from, save an old yearly financial statement which admittedly didn't provide enough details?
This is getting pathetic.
Anthony
Actually, I have more idea that I would want to say, because I believe saying it publicly would not be good business :-) But getting good figures is a priority. Which is why I discussed in length the issue with Carolyn about 2 months ago, and Carolyn and the accountant are currently working on categorizing revenue and expenses, which will allow us to have a much better feedback. She is also currently preparing all data to get ready for the audit.
We do business. That is not a wish, that is a statement. Now, we do not do it very well, and staff is already overworked, so can not give more time to it. Two solutions. One is to proceed not doing it well since no time. We can decide not to answer the phone as well, and to put propositions received by mail in the trash. Make no DVDs. No datafeed. The other is to better organize the area. Which is our choice.
Now, please take a step backward.
Do you remember that just ONE year ago, we had only 2 employees, one being Brion in California (so, tech area) and the other Danny (the "do it all", "save the day" man) ? We did not have any clean financial statements ? Officially, Jimbo was our CEO, so in charge of accounting, which he did not really have time to do.
In one year, we created an office. There are people working in, issuing data we can rely on. We have enough money to run with, without having to bother you every couple of weeks. The website is hardly down any more now, which was not the case 2 years ago, whilst the traffic was much smaller. We pay our bills. And we pay them in time (not the case a year ago). Our financial statements may not be perfectly detailed, but they are *clean*. We have people answering the phone. We have a framework to receive interns (not the case a year ago). We have a file server in the office and a secure network. We set up a fundraising database to track every donation. We set up an acceptable procedure (by audit standard) to receive checks and cash them. And so on.
And this is *getting* pathetic ?
Hardly.
Anthony, I think you have over-stepped "innocent" questioning and comments for one day. Please step away from the computer for a little bit.
Cbrown1023
-----Original Message----- From: foundation-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:foundation-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Florence Devouard Sent: Friday, May 18, 2007 6:36 PM To: foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] [announcement] new staff member in businessdevelopment
Anthony wrote:
On 5/17/07, Florence Devouard Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
First, an announcement, then some thoughts
We just hired Vishal Pattel as part-time business developer.
This is horrible. The foundation is having enough trouble trying to run a charity, and now you're trying to run a business on top of that? The chair of the board doesn't even have a good idea where the revenue is coming from, save an old yearly financial statement which admittedly didn't provide enough details?
This is getting pathetic.
Anthony
Actually, I have more idea that I would want to say, because I believe saying it publicly would not be good business :-) But getting good figures is a priority. Which is why I discussed in length the issue with Carolyn about 2 months ago, and Carolyn and the accountant are currently working on categorizing revenue and expenses, which will allow us to have a much better feedback. She is also currently preparing all data to get ready for the audit.
We do business. That is not a wish, that is a statement. Now, we do not do it very well, and staff is already overworked, so can not give more time to it. Two solutions. One is to proceed not doing it well since no time. We can decide not to answer the phone as well, and to put propositions received by mail in the trash. Make no DVDs. No datafeed. The other is to better organize the area. Which is our choice.
Now, please take a step backward.
Do you remember that just ONE year ago, we had only 2 employees, one being Brion in California (so, tech area) and the other Danny (the "do it all", "save the day" man) ? We did not have any clean financial statements ? Officially, Jimbo was our CEO, so in charge of accounting, which he did not really have time to do.
In one year, we created an office. There are people working in, issuing data we can rely on. We have enough money to run with, without having to bother you every couple of weeks. The website is hardly down any more now, which was not the case 2 years ago, whilst the traffic was much smaller. We pay our bills. And we pay them in time (not the case a year ago). Our financial statements may not be perfectly detailed, but they are *clean*. We have people answering the phone. We have a framework to receive interns (not the case a year ago). We have a file server in the office and a secure network. We set up a fundraising database to track every donation. We set up an acceptable procedure (by audit standard) to receive checks and cash them. And so on.
And this is *getting* pathetic ?
Hardly.
_______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
On 5/18/07, Florence Devouard Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
Actually, I have more idea that I would want to say, because I believe saying it publicly would not be good business :-) But getting good figures is a priority. Which is why I discussed in length the issue with Carolyn about 2 months ago, and Carolyn and the accountant are currently working on categorizing revenue and expenses, which will allow us to have a much better feedback. She is also currently preparing all data to get ready for the audit.
Regular financial statements were promised by Brad almost a year ago. But today you make the statement: "I have some estimates of some values for the current year. But I do not have clear precise data month by month." Forget about *getting* pathetic. That *is* pathetic.
We do business. That is not a wish, that is a statement. Now, we do not do it very well, and staff is already overworked, so can not give more time to it. Two solutions. One is to proceed not doing it well since no time. We can decide not to answer the phone as well, and to put propositions received by mail in the trash. Make no DVDs. No datafeed. The other is to better organize the area. Which is our choice.
The WMF is not a business. It's a publicly supported charity. As such, I think the proper solution is to limit business activities as much as possible. For instance, data feed services should focus on the distribution aspects (getting a datafeed to as many people as possible) instead of the profiteering aspects (making as much money off the datafeed as possible).
Now, please take a step backward.
Do you remember that just ONE year ago, we had only 2 employees, one being Brion in California (so, tech area) and the other Danny (the "do it all", "save the day" man) ? We did not have any clean financial statements ? Officially, Jimbo was our CEO, so in charge of accounting, which he did not really have time to do.
In one year, we created an office. There are people working in, issuing data we can rely on. We have enough money to run with, without having to bother you every couple of weeks. The website is hardly down any more now, which was not the case 2 years ago, whilst the traffic was much smaller. We pay our bills. And we pay them in time (not the case a year ago). Our financial statements may not be perfectly detailed, but they are *clean*. We have people answering the phone. We have a framework to receive interns (not the case a year ago). We have a file server in the office and a secure network. We set up a fundraising database to track every donation. We set up an acceptable procedure (by audit standard) to receive checks and cash them. And so on.
And this is *getting* pathetic ?
Hardly.
Fair enough, you've accomplished a number of things in the past year. You've gone from Jimbo as CEO to Brad as ED to having no one as CEO or ED - three steps each progressing beyond the previous. But it seems to me things are progressing far far too slowly. I say that this is getting pathetic not in that things are getting worse, but that more and more time is going by without the glaring problems being resolved.
Anthony
1. Any entity that receives as much money as we do and has as much as we do, can be considered a business and be entitled to the same necessities as such an entity requires.
2. The only position we are looking to fill is that of Executive Director. Chief executive officer is a deprecated position name. That position is filled by the head of the Wikimedia Foundation head, the nice lady you have been degrading in this thread. The closest equivalent, the Chief Operating Officer position is and has been filled by Carolyn for 5 months.
Casey Brown
-----Original Message----- From: foundation-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:foundation-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Anthony Sent: Friday, May 18, 2007 9:07 PM To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] [announcement] new staff member in businessdevelopment
On 5/18/07, Florence Devouard Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
Actually, I have more idea that I would want to say, because I believe saying it publicly would not be good business :-) But getting good figures is a priority. Which is why I discussed in length the issue with Carolyn about 2 months ago, and Carolyn and the accountant are currently working on categorizing revenue and expenses, which will allow us to have a much better feedback. She is also currently preparing all data to get ready for the audit.
Regular financial statements were promised by Brad almost a year ago. But today you make the statement: "I have some estimates of some values for the current year. But I do not have clear precise data month by month." Forget about *getting* pathetic. That *is* pathetic.
We do business. That is not a wish, that is a statement. Now, we do not do it very well, and staff is already overworked, so can not give more time to it. Two solutions. One is to proceed not doing it well since no time. We can decide not to answer the phone as well, and to put propositions received by mail in the trash. Make no DVDs. No datafeed. The other is to better organize the area. Which is our choice.
The WMF is not a business. It's a publicly supported charity. As such, I think the proper solution is to limit business activities as much as possible. For instance, data feed services should focus on the distribution aspects (getting a datafeed to as many people as possible) instead of the profiteering aspects (making as much money off the datafeed as possible).
Now, please take a step backward.
Do you remember that just ONE year ago, we had only 2 employees, one being Brion in California (so, tech area) and the other Danny (the "do it all", "save the day" man) ? We did not have any clean financial statements ? Officially, Jimbo was our CEO, so in charge of accounting, which he did not really have time to do.
In one year, we created an office. There are people working in, issuing data we can rely on. We have enough money to run with, without having to bother you every couple of weeks. The website is hardly down any more now, which was not the case 2 years ago, whilst the traffic was much smaller. We pay our bills. And we pay them in time (not the case a year ago). Our financial statements may not be perfectly detailed, but they are *clean*. We have people answering the phone. We have a framework to receive interns (not the case a year ago). We have a file server in the office and a secure network. We set up a fundraising database to track every donation. We set up an acceptable procedure (by audit standard) to receive checks and cash them. And so on.
And this is *getting* pathetic ?
Hardly.
Fair enough, you've accomplished a number of things in the past year. You've gone from Jimbo as CEO to Brad as ED to having no one as CEO or ED - three steps each progressing beyond the previous. But it seems to me things are progressing far far too slowly. I say that this is getting pathetic not in that things are getting worse, but that more and more time is going by without the glaring problems being resolved.
Anthony
_______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
On 5/18/07, Anthony wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
The WMF is not a business. It's a publicly supported charity. As such, I think the proper solution is to limit business activities as much as possible.
This is insane and irresponsible; any organization with this much activity and financial throughput not run as a business (in terms of professionalism), specifically INCLUDING real charities, is insane.
The charities and nonprofits I know of all enthusiastically hire professional business people to do business stuff... because it's how you get things done at that level.
Exactly.
Casey Brown Cbrown1023
-----Original Message----- From: foundation-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:foundation-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of George Herbert Sent: Friday, May 18, 2007 9:21 PM To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] [announcement] new staff member in businessdevelopment
On 5/18/07, Anthony wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
The WMF is not a business. It's a publicly supported charity. As such, I think the proper solution is to limit business activities as much as possible.
This is insane and irresponsible; any organization with this much activity and financial throughput not run as a business (in terms of professionalism), specifically INCLUDING real charities, is insane.
The charities and nonprofits I know of all enthusiastically hire professional business people to do business stuff... because it's how you get things done at that level.
On 5/18/07, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/18/07, Anthony wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
The WMF is not a business. It's a publicly supported charity. As such, I think the proper solution is to limit business activities as much as possible.
This is insane and irresponsible; any organization with this much activity and financial throughput not run as a business (in terms of professionalism), specifically INCLUDING real charities, is insane.
The charities and nonprofits I know of all enthusiastically hire professional business people to do business stuff... because it's how you get things done at that level.
This is really a matter of terminology, which I'm not interested in getting into. However, the job description of the business developer makes it clear that this position goes beyond the necessities of running a charity.
Obviously the WMF needs to be responsible and professional. Obviously they need to hire experienced professionals to do things which can casually be referred to as "business stuff" (collecting donations, applying for grants, producing financial statements, writing to donors, reviewing contracts, etc.) If the announcement was the hire of a new grants coordinator, or a controller, or a new legal coordinator, my reaction would have been completely different. I'm not objecting to the job title, I'm objecting to the job description.
Anthony
On 5/18/07, Anthony wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
On 5/18/07, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/18/07, Anthony wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
The WMF is not a business. It's a publicly supported charity. As such, I think the proper solution is to limit business activities as much as possible.
This is insane and irresponsible; any organization with this much activity and financial throughput not run as a business (in terms of professionalism), specifically INCLUDING real charities, is insane.
The charities and nonprofits I know of all enthusiastically hire professional business people to do business stuff... because it's how you get things done at that level.
This is really a matter of terminology, which I'm not interested in getting into. However, the job description of the business developer makes it clear that this position goes beyond the necessities of running a charity.
Obviously the WMF needs to be responsible and professional. Obviously they need to hire experienced professionals to do things which can casually be referred to as "business stuff" (collecting donations, applying for grants, producing financial statements, writing to donors, reviewing contracts, etc.) If the announcement was the hire of a new grants coordinator, or a controller, or a new legal coordinator, my reaction would have been completely different. I'm not objecting to the job title, I'm objecting to the job description.
Anthony
You don't wish Wikipedia to be involved in business income ventures other than pure donations type relationships?
Most big charities engage in "real business" relationships (selling services, intellectual property or content, training, consulting relative to the charities' activities interactions with the world, etc) as well as asking for donations. This is not unreasonable and does not sully the name of the charity unless you chose unsavory business practices or partners.
On 5/18/07, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/18/07, Anthony wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
On 5/18/07, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/18/07, Anthony wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
The WMF is not a business. It's a publicly supported charity. As such, I think the proper solution is to limit business activities as much as possible.
This is insane and irresponsible; any organization with this much activity and financial throughput not run as a business (in terms of professionalism), specifically INCLUDING real charities, is insane.
The charities and nonprofits I know of all enthusiastically hire professional business people to do business stuff... because it's how you get things done at that level.
This is really a matter of terminology, which I'm not interested in getting into. However, the job description of the business developer makes it clear that this position goes beyond the necessities of running a charity.
Obviously the WMF needs to be responsible and professional. Obviously they need to hire experienced professionals to do things which can casually be referred to as "business stuff" (collecting donations, applying for grants, producing financial statements, writing to donors, reviewing contracts, etc.) If the announcement was the hire of a new grants coordinator, or a controller, or a new legal coordinator, my reaction would have been completely different. I'm not objecting to the job title, I'm objecting to the job description.
Anthony
You don't wish Wikipedia to be involved in business income ventures other than pure donations type relationships?
I'm not sure the foundation should actively avoid it, but I don't think they should be hiring someone to focus on it, especially not at this time, when so many more important areas need to be taken care of.
Most big charities engage in "real business" relationships (selling services, intellectual property or content, training, consulting relative to the charities' activities interactions with the world, etc) as well as asking for donations.
Not to a significant degree they don't. Shall we choose 10 US-based 501(c)(3) public charities and look at their financial statements, to see what percent of their revenues come from donations, and what percent comes from business activities?
Anthony
We have to distinguish tax-exempt activities here from those which are not. Much business development is about basic logo & trademark licensing, e.g. for the purposes of setting up a mobile phone portal. Such royalties are tax-exempt if they are not combined with the provision of services, see e.g.: http://www.independentsector.org/mission_market/tax.htm
The other area of business development have been the live update feed agreements with companies like Answers.com. These are currently on a relatively small scale. I cannot comment on whether these need to be classified as UBIT, but if so, it should not pose a problem.
Should the scale of business development exceed our expectations, we can spin off a taxable subsidiary if necessary: http://www.asaecenter.org/PublicationsResources/whitepaperdetail.cfm?ItemNum...
This is what, for instance, National Geographic or Mozilla have done.
Vishal was hired on Carolyn's recommendation. He has previously worked for us as an intern, and if we had not hired him now, he would likely have moved on. He is working on business development on a part-time basis. I do not consider it unreasonable at all to devote staff time to this source of revenue. As noted above, much of it is not taxable to begin with, and the small extent to which it may be does not currently pose a problem. Even if it should become a problem, it's one of the type I wouldn't mind having.
As for other priorities, we have spoken to candidates for the Legal and ED position and will likely meet two of them at the next Board meeting in Amsterdam, June 1-3.
On 5/19/07, Anthony wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
On 5/18/07, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/18/07, Anthony wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
On 5/18/07, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/18/07, Anthony wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
The WMF is not a business. It's a publicly supported charity. As such, I think the proper solution is to limit business activities as much as possible.
This is insane and irresponsible; any organization with this much activity and financial throughput not run as a business (in terms of professionalism), specifically INCLUDING real charities, is insane.
The charities and nonprofits I know of all enthusiastically hire professional business people to do business stuff... because it's how you get things done at that level.
This is really a matter of terminology, which I'm not interested in getting into. However, the job description of the business developer makes it clear that this position goes beyond the necessities of running a charity.
Obviously the WMF needs to be responsible and professional. Obviously they need to hire experienced professionals to do things which can casually be referred to as "business stuff" (collecting donations, applying for grants, producing financial statements, writing to donors, reviewing contracts, etc.) If the announcement was the hire of a new grants coordinator, or a controller, or a new legal coordinator, my reaction would have been completely different. I'm not objecting to the job title, I'm objecting to the job description.
Anthony
You don't wish Wikipedia to be involved in business income ventures other than pure donations type relationships?
I'm not sure the foundation should actively avoid it, but I don't think they should be hiring someone to focus on it, especially not at this time, when so many more important areas need to be taken care of.
Most big charities engage in "real business" relationships (selling services, intellectual property or content, training, consulting relative to the charities' activities interactions with the world, etc) as well as asking for donations.
Not to a significant degree they don't. Shall we choose 10 US-based 501(c)(3) public charities and look at their financial statements, to see what percent of their revenues come from donations, and what percent comes from business activities?
Anthony
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
On 5/19/07, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
We have to distinguish tax-exempt activities here from those which are not. Much business development is about basic logo & trademark licensing, e.g. for the purposes of setting up a mobile phone portal. Such royalties are tax-exempt if they are not combined with the provision of services, see e.g.: http://www.independentsector.org/mission_market/tax.htm
They are tax exempt, but they still are limited by section 509 of the Internal Revenue Code.
The other area of business development have been the live update feed agreements with companies like Answers.com. These are currently on a relatively small scale. I cannot comment on whether these need to be classified as UBIT, but if so, it should not pose a problem.
I could comment on this, but I'm not going to do so publicly. Suffice it to say that right now live updates serve a dual purpose of disseminating free content and raising revenue.
The issue with this is one of focus. I don't think I'm alone in my belief that the focus in this area should be on disseminating free content, and the data feeds should be managed by someone with this goal in mind, not the goal of "analyz[ing] the price asked ... and implement[ing] an increase if suitable". These two goals are in fact counter to each other. My opinion is that data feeds should be *more* accessible, not less.
Perhaps both goals, increasing revenue *and* disseminating more free content, could be achieved in certain ways, such as making the data feed more visible, providing a market price so that *anyone* could subscribe, not just the big players who can negotiate individual contracts. I suppose it could be argued that this might eliminate some monopoly market powers that the WMF currently has, and thus reduce revenues, but as we're talking about free content it's probably only a matter of time before someone starts competing with the WMF if it doesn't get its act together in this manner. In fact, there's probably nothing stopping your current data feed partners from turning around and reselling the data feed to others, as any contractual restriction on doing so would violate the GFDL.
Should the scale of business development exceed our expectations, we can spin off a taxable subsidiary if necessary: http://www.asaecenter.org/PublicationsResources/whitepaperdetail.cfm?ItemNum...
This is what, for instance, National Geographic or Mozilla have done.
What are the expectations? I would assume the expectations are significant if someone is being hired to work on business development. Obviously you don't have to answer that if you think it's confidential, but you're the one who brought up expectations.
Vishal was hired on Carolyn's recommendation. He has previously worked for us as an intern, and if we had not hired him now, he would likely have moved on. He is working on business development on a part-time basis. I do not consider it unreasonable at all to devote staff time to this source of revenue. As noted above, much of it is not taxable to begin with, and the small extent to which it may be does not currently pose a problem. Even if it should become a problem, it's one of the type I wouldn't mind having.
As for other priorities, we have spoken to candidates for the Legal and ED position and will likely meet two of them at the next Board meeting in Amsterdam, June 1-3.
Thanks for your openness on this. I certainly wouldn't worry about whether or not the income is taxable, after all taxation is always (usually) less than 100%. There are other tax issues which are much more serious than whether or not the income is taxable, though. Your comments on the matter seem to suggest that at least someone has informed you of them, which is a lot more than was suggested by Ant's open-ended questions.
But I think the main issue has nothing to do with the IRS. It's a matter of focus. Developing a profitable business competes with the maximum production and distribution of content. Charging maximum prices for data feeds reduces the dissemination of the data. Charging licensing fees to DVD distributors raises the prices of the DVDs and thus reduces the number of DVDs which are distributed. Etc, etc (*).
Anyway, you've relieved my worry to some extent by acknowledging at least some awareness of the legal issues (in contrast to Ant who said "All questions difficult right now with no legal counsel though.") But I hope you and the rest of the board can keep in mind the danger of having someone on board focusing on business development. Please always keep business considerations as a secondary concern to the mission of the foundation. This new position is worrisome, but I suppose it can be managed.
(*) That Cisco commercial was cool, though. I had noticed Wikipedia in it and had never considered that they actually paid the WMF for it.
Hello,
Anthony a écrit : (...)
But I think the main issue has nothing to do with the IRS. It's a matter of focus. Developing a profitable business competes with the maximum production and distribution of content. Charging maximum prices for data feeds reduces the dissemination of the data. Charging licensing fees to DVD distributors raises the prices of the DVDs and thus reduces the number of DVDs which are distributed. Etc, etc (*).
I think this is false, because we deal with digital and free content.
It is not because you sell a datafeed to one organisation at one prize that you sell it to everybody at the same price. Same logic for DVDs.
Regards,
Yann
On 5/19/07, Yann Forget yann@forget-me.net wrote:
Hello,
Anthony a écrit : (...)
But I think the main issue has nothing to do with the IRS. It's a matter of focus. Developing a profitable business competes with the maximum production and distribution of content. Charging maximum prices for data feeds reduces the dissemination of the data. Charging licensing fees to DVD distributors raises the prices of the DVDs and thus reduces the number of DVDs which are distributed. Etc, etc (*).
I think this is false, because we deal with digital and free content.
It is not because you sell a datafeed to one organisation at one prize that you sell it to everybody at the same price. Same logic for DVDs.
Interesting. I don't think that would be feasible for datafeeds though, and I'm pretty sure it isn't feasible for DVDs. In the case of DVDs, if you tried to sell them to different groups for different prices, you'd simply see people resell the DVDs (engage in arbitrage). I think this would happen for datafeeds as well, if they were ever accessible to the regular public. If I as an individual could buy an en.wikipedia datafeed for $100/month (which would probably be more than enough to cover WMF's actual costs), the WMF wouldn't be able to charge companies $5000/month, because if they did I'd just step in and resell my $100/month datafeed for much less than $5000.
And I think the WMF *should* be willing to sell unrestricted datafeeds to *anyone* for little more than its actual costs. This is in line with maximizing the useful distribution of free content, which is after all the purpose of the WMF.
Anthony
Anthony wrote:
On 5/19/07, Yann Forget yann@forget-me.net wrote:
Hello,
Anthony a écrit : (...)
But I think the main issue has nothing to do with the IRS. It's a matter of focus. Developing a profitable business competes with the maximum production and distribution of content. Charging maximum prices for data feeds reduces the dissemination of the data. Charging licensing fees to DVD distributors raises the prices of the DVDs and thus reduces the number of DVDs which are distributed. Etc, etc (*).
I think this is false, because we deal with digital and free content.
It is not because you sell a datafeed to one organisation at one prize that you sell it to everybody at the same price. Same logic for DVDs.
Interesting. I don't think that would be feasible for datafeeds though, and I'm pretty sure it isn't feasible for DVDs. In the case of DVDs, if you tried to sell them to different groups for different prices, you'd simply see people resell the DVDs (engage in arbitrage).
Reselling one or two DVD would not be a big deal. However, engaging into a real reselling activity of a DVD using trademarks which you are not authorized to use for a commercial activity, is illegal.
I think this would happen for datafeeds as well, if they were ever accessible to the regular public. If I as an individual could buy an en.wikipedia datafeed for $100/month (which would probably be more than enough to cover WMF's actual costs), the WMF wouldn't be able to charge companies $5000/month, because if they did I'd just step in and resell my $100/month datafeed for much less than $5000.
Yeah, and since your contract agreement at $100 explicitely does not allow you to resell the feed to a third party, you would engage into illegal activity as well.
And I think the WMF *should* be willing to sell unrestricted datafeeds to *anyone* for little more than its actual costs. This is in line with maximizing the useful distribution of free content, which is after all the purpose of the WMF.
Datafeed is one of the way we can make money. Which will allow us to pay the accountant. Which will allow us to provide all the financial information you are noisily requesting. If you count in "actual cost" uniquely the bandwidth cost, $100 could make it. But running an organization uniquely counting as cost, the bandwidth, is seriously being out of it.
ant
Anthony
Reselling one or two DVD would not be a big deal. However, engaging into a real reselling activity of a DVD using trademarks which you are not authorized to use for a commercial activity, is illegal.
Trademark law would stop me making my own DVDs and selling them as Wikipedia DVDs, but does it really stop me selling official Wikipedia DVDs that I own? Having a trademark doesn't give you exclusivity on using it, it just restricts what other people can use it for. If I'm talking about Wikipedia, I can use the Wikipedia trademark.
Yeah, and since your contract agreement at $100 explicitely does not allow you to resell the feed to a third party, you would engage into illegal activity as well.
That's a much more definite point. A datafeed involves a contractual agreement between the two parties, so you can impose whatever restrictions you like. A simple sale of a tangible item does not.
Datafeed is one of the way we can make money. Which will allow us to pay the accountant. Which will allow us to provide all the financial information you are noisily requesting. If you count in "actual cost" uniquely the bandwidth cost, $100 could make it. But running an organization uniquely counting as cost, the bandwidth, is seriously being out of it.
It's a matter of priorities. Is it more important to get as much free information as possible out there right now, or to be still able to get free information out in a year's time? Anthony seems to believe the former, you the latter. Both are valid points of view.
Hoi, What Anthony conveniently forgets is how we are going to pay for it all. Yes, we want to get as much expose our data in as many ways as possible. That is something we agree on. Fact is that the WMF is underfunded, it could do much more if it had money to act on its convictions. Thanks, GerardM
On 5/20/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
It's a matter of priorities. Is it more important to get as much free information as possible out there right now, or to be still able to get free information out in a year's time? Anthony seems to believe the former, you the latter. Both are valid points of view.
On 5/20/07, GerardM gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Hoi, What Anthony conveniently forgets is how we are going to pay for it all.
Pay for what? The stuff that's being done now? Donations are going to pay for it. For giving a datafeed to anyone in the world? The people receiving the datafeeds will pay for it.
Imagine being able to get cheap or even free hosting on a multi-user server which has a live datafeed. Toolserver has given us a glimpse of the possibilites, now imagine if thousands of people had shell access.
Yes, we want to get as much expose our data in as many ways as possible. That is something we agree on. Fact is that the WMF is underfunded, it could do much more if it had money to act on its convictions.
Underfunded/overfunded is relative, but I do agree with you that the WMF could do much more if it had more money. But it's not fair to artificially restrict current projects in order to get that money.
Anthony
I disagree, it *is* fair to postpone projects for the good of and to insure the longevity of the organization as a whole. Otherwise, the effects of these projects will be short-lived.
Cbrown1023
-----Original Message----- From: foundation-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:foundation-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Anthony Sent: Sunday, May 20, 2007 9:42 AM To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] [announcement] new staff member in businessdevelopment
On 5/20/07, GerardM gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Hoi, What Anthony conveniently forgets is how we are going to pay for it all.
Pay for what? The stuff that's being done now? Donations are going to pay for it. For giving a datafeed to anyone in the world? The people receiving the datafeeds will pay for it.
Imagine being able to get cheap or even free hosting on a multi-user server which has a live datafeed. Toolserver has given us a glimpse of the possibilites, now imagine if thousands of people had shell access.
Yes, we want to get as much expose our data in as many ways as possible. That is something we agree on. Fact is that the WMF is underfunded, it
could
do much more if it had money to act on its convictions.
Underfunded/overfunded is relative, but I do agree with you that the WMF could do much more if it had more money. But it's not fair to artificially restrict current projects in order to get that money.
Anthony
_______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
On 20/05/07, Anthony wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
On 5/20/07, GerardM gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Hoi, What Anthony conveniently forgets is how we are going to pay for it all.
Pay for what? The stuff that's being done now? Donations are going to pay for it. For giving a datafeed to anyone in the world? The people receiving the datafeeds will pay for it. Imagine being able to get cheap or even free hosting on a multi-user server which has a live datafeed. Toolserver has given us a glimpse of the possibilites, now imagine if thousands of people had shell access.
We are not disagreeing with your ideas, I am sure they could work, but consider how much money starting up a project like that would cost. At the moment the servers for the current wikis aren't good enough - let alone thousands of other websites using who know how much storage and CPU.
Yes, we want to get as much expose our data in as many ways as possible. That is something we agree on. Fact is that the WMF is underfunded, it could do much more if it had money to act on its convictions.
Underfunded/overfunded is relative, but I do agree with you that the WMF could do much more if it had more money. But it's not fair to artificially restrict current projects in order to get that money.
Anthony
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
On 5/20/07, Robert Leverington lcarsdata@googlemail.com wrote:
On 20/05/07, Anthony wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
On 5/20/07, GerardM gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Hoi, What Anthony conveniently forgets is how we are going to pay for it all.
Pay for what? The stuff that's being done now? Donations are going to pay for it. For giving a datafeed to anyone in the world? The people receiving the datafeeds will pay for it. Imagine being able to get cheap or even free hosting on a multi-user server which has a live datafeed. Toolserver has given us a glimpse of the possibilites, now imagine if thousands of people had shell access.
We are not disagreeing with your ideas, I am sure they could work, but consider how much money starting up a project like that would cost. At the moment the servers for the current wikis aren't good enough - let alone thousands of other websites using who know how much storage and CPU.
All the WMF would have to do is offer a datafeed at cost. Then let someone else run the toolserver. The storage required would only need to hold a single copy of the data. CPU scale about linerally, but you could hold a lot of users on a single machine.
Hell, if the WMF will give me a datafeed at twice its cost without any restrictions on reselling it, I'll set it up myself.
Anthony
GerardM wrote:
Hoi, What Anthony conveniently forgets is how we are going to pay for it all. Yes, we want to get as much expose our data in as many ways as possible. That is something we agree on. Fact is that the WMF is underfunded, it could do much more if it had money to act on its convictions.
Absolutely! And this is exactly why these topics need more not less discussion.
Ec
Thomas Dalton wrote:
Yeah, and since your contract agreement at $100 explicitely does not allow you to resell the feed to a third party, you would engage into illegal activity as well.
That's a much more definite point. A datafeed involves a contractual agreement between the two parties, so you can impose whatever restrictions you like. A simple sale of a tangible item does not.
What the statutes say is only one part of the law; actual enforcement is quite another. If Anthony buys for $100 and sells for $200 who is going to feel inclined to go across the country to begin a legal action to recover damages. The worst damage that can be done to him in practical terms is to cut off his data feed. At that point he can perhaps restart it with another name and account until that too is discovered.
Restrictions that are not easily enforceable are a waste of time. The movie and recording industries are rapidly discovering that. Copyright law has been looking more foolish every day. What made it work in the past was the sheer impracticality of infringement. Industry could expand the restrictiveness of re-use because there weren't enough people to care about writing NPOV into copyright law.
What has changed is that people copying a DVD can produce a high quality copy and don't see themselves as doing anything wrong. When copying was from a vinyl record to tape it could be done at home but the quality was often not there. The process was also slower and more tedious. Now that the technical restrictions are gone, except for the artificial ones like DRM gimmicks, few people see anything wrong in personal copying and distributing copies to friends. Sure, it's a form of disrespect for the law, but respect for law depends on a perception that the law is fair. As Wikipedians we tend to see law mostly in terms of intellectual property and libel law, but to those who focus on that limited range of law I can only say, "You ain't seen nothin' yet."
For us it means that we should not base policy on unenforceable law.
Datafeed is one of the way we can make money. Which will allow us to pay the accountant. Which will allow us to provide all the financial information you are noisily requesting. If you count in "actual cost" uniquely the bandwidth cost, $100 could make it. But running an organization uniquely counting as cost, the bandwidth, is seriously being out of it.
It's a matter of priorities. Is it more important to get as much free information as possible out there right now, or to be still able to get free information out in a year's time? Anthony seems to believe the former, you the latter. Both are valid points of view.
Yes. Without product there is no profit; without profit there is no product. At some point along the way it takes more than altruism to keep the horse running. We have yet to delve into the broader economic and social impacts of such a project. We are assembling intellectual capital, but we have yet to reconcile that with more traditional forms of capital.
Ec
On 5/20/07, Florence Devouard Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
Anthony wrote:
On 5/19/07, Yann Forget yann@forget-me.net wrote:
Hello,
Anthony a écrit : (...)
But I think the main issue has nothing to do with the IRS. It's a matter of focus. Developing a profitable business competes with the maximum production and distribution of content. Charging maximum prices for data feeds reduces the dissemination of the data. Charging licensing fees to DVD distributors raises the prices of the DVDs and thus reduces the number of DVDs which are distributed. Etc, etc (*).
I think this is false, because we deal with digital and free content.
It is not because you sell a datafeed to one organisation at one prize that you sell it to everybody at the same price. Same logic for DVDs.
Interesting. I don't think that would be feasible for datafeeds though, and I'm pretty sure it isn't feasible for DVDs. In the case of DVDs, if you tried to sell them to different groups for different prices, you'd simply see people resell the DVDs (engage in arbitrage).
Reselling one or two DVD would not be a big deal. However, engaging into a real reselling activity of a DVD using trademarks which you are not authorized to use for a commercial activity, is illegal.
Umm, how so? Check out eBay sometime, or half.com (have they gotten rid of that yet?). People resell DVDs using trademarks which they aren't authorized to use for a commercial activity *all the time*. Besides that, it's most certainly not illegal.
I think this would happen for datafeeds as well, if they were ever accessible to the regular public. If I as an individual could buy an en.wikipedia datafeed for $100/month (which would probably be more than enough to cover WMF's actual costs), the WMF wouldn't be able to charge companies $5000/month, because if they did I'd just step in and resell my $100/month datafeed for much less than $5000.
Yeah, and since your contract agreement at $100 explicitely does not allow you to resell the feed to a third party, you would engage into illegal activity as well.
Then you could sue me, and I'd countersue you for violating the GFDL. What part of "add no other conditions whatsoever to those of this License" don't you understand?
If you're currently forcing datafeed recipients to agree not to redistribute the data they receive, then you're in major breach of the GFDL. Not just the relatively minor breaches that have been going on for so long, but you've subverting the very essence of copyleft.
I seriously hope your current contracts don't do that.
And I think the WMF *should* be willing to sell unrestricted datafeeds to *anyone* for little more than its actual costs. This is in line with maximizing the useful distribution of free content, which is after all the purpose of the WMF.
Datafeed is one of the way we can make money. Which will allow us to pay the accountant. Which will allow us to provide all the financial information you are noisily requesting.
The millions of dollars in donations you've collected is another way to pay an accountant.
If you count in "actual cost" uniquely the bandwidth cost, $100 could make it. But running an organization uniquely counting as cost, the bandwidth, is seriously being out of it.
The organization is going to be run regardless of whether or not the datafeed is given. Counting all the costs of running the organization when calculating the marginal cost of providing a datafeed, is seriously being out of it.
Anthony
You seriously do not understand the inner-workings of this organization. We do not have "millions of dollars" right now, we have enough to get by and probably some more, but we definitely do not have the large amount you are talking about. Please look up the prices of the servers alone and the maintenance that needs to be done on them. If you do not understand something, ask, don't incorrectly point a rude finger.
Casey Brown Cbrown1023
-----Original Message----- From: foundation-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:foundation-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Anthony Sent: Sunday, May 20, 2007 7:46 AM To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] [announcement] new staff member in businessdevelopment
And I think the WMF *should* be willing to sell unrestricted datafeeds to *anyone* for little more than its actual costs. This is in line with maximizing the useful distribution of free content, which is after all the purpose of the WMF.
Datafeed is one of the way we can make money. Which will allow us to pay the accountant. Which will allow us to provide all the financial information you are noisily requesting.
The millions of dollars in donations you've collected is another way to pay an accountant.
Then you could sue me, and I'd countersue you for violating the GFDL. What part of "add no other conditions whatsoever to those of this License" don't you understand?
If you're currently forcing datafeed recipients to agree not to redistribute the data they receive, then you're in major breach of the GFDL. Not just the relatively minor breaches that have been going on for so long, but you've subverting the very essence of copyleft.
It depends what you mean by "reselling the datafeed". If we're talking about making a new datafeed from your servers to your client and sending the data you get from the Wikimedia datafeed, then there is nothing anyone can do the stop you, but that's not really reselling the datafeed, it's just reselling the data. If you mean somehow giving your customers access directly to the Wikimedia datafeed, so that they are using Wikimedia's bandwidth, then the GDFL doesn't cover that - it's that which I would assume is forbidden by contract.
On 5/20/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
Then you could sue me, and I'd countersue you for violating the GFDL. What part of "add no other conditions whatsoever to those of this License" don't you understand?
If you're currently forcing datafeed recipients to agree not to redistribute the data they receive, then you're in major breach of the GFDL. Not just the relatively minor breaches that have been going on for so long, but you've subverting the very essence of copyleft.
It depends what you mean by "reselling the datafeed". If we're talking about making a new datafeed from your servers to your client and sending the data you get from the Wikimedia datafeed, then there is nothing anyone can do the stop you, but that's not really reselling the datafeed, it's just reselling the data.
Fair enough - that's what I meant. Taking the stream of data, copying it, and distributing it to others.
If you mean somehow giving your customers access directly to the Wikimedia datafeed, so that they are using Wikimedia's bandwidth, then the GDFL doesn't cover that - it's that which I would assume is forbidden by contract.
No, I didn't mean that at all.
Anthony
Anthony wrote:
On 5/20/07, Florence Devouard Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
Anthony wrote:
On 5/19/07, Yann Forget yann@forget-me.net wrote:
Hello,
Anthony a écrit :
But I think the main issue has nothing to do with the IRS. It's a matter of focus. Developing a profitable business competes with the maximum production and distribution of content. Charging maximum prices for data feeds reduces the dissemination of the data. Charging licensing fees to DVD distributors raises the prices of the DVDs and thus reduces the number of DVDs which are distributed. Etc, etc (*).
I think this is false, because we deal with digital and free content.
It is not because you sell a datafeed to one organisation at one prize that you sell it to everybody at the same price. Same logic for DVDs.
Interesting. I don't think that would be feasible for datafeeds though, and I'm pretty sure it isn't feasible for DVDs. In the case of DVDs, if you tried to sell them to different groups for different prices, you'd simply see people resell the DVDs (engage in arbitrage).
Reselling one or two DVD would not be a big deal. However, engaging into a real reselling activity of a DVD using trademarks which you are not authorized to use for a commercial activity, is illegal.
Umm, how so? Check out eBay sometime, or half.com (have they gotten rid of that yet?). People resell DVDs using trademarks which they aren't authorized to use for a commercial activity *all the time*. Besides that, it's most certainly not illegal.
Oh? How can eBay possibly check out whether something offered for sale is pirated? What would it need to do just to check whether DRM has been disabled on a particularly? As long as they ask no questions nobody will tell them any lies. How many potential buyers are going to complain about pirate material when they could be getting a bargain? Not illegal sounds more like not real.
I think this would happen for datafeeds as well, if they were ever accessible to the regular public. If I as an individual could buy an en.wikipedia datafeed for $100/month (which would probably be more than enough to cover WMF's actual costs), the WMF wouldn't be able to charge companies $5000/month, because if they did I'd just step in and resell my $100/month datafeed for much less than $5000.
Yeah, and since your contract agreement at $100 explicitely does not allow you to resell the feed to a third party, you would engage into illegal activity as well.
Then you could sue me, and I'd countersue you for violating the GFDL. What part of "add no other conditions whatsoever to those of this License" don't you understand?
It's not a matter of who could sue, but of who would.
If you're currently forcing datafeed recipients to agree not to redistribute the data they receive, then you're in major breach of the GFDL. Not just the relatively minor breaches that have been going on for so long, but you've subverting the very essence of copyleft.
I seriously hope your current contracts don't do that.
That's too speculative for me.
And I think the WMF *should* be willing to sell unrestricted datafeeds to *anyone* for little more than its actual costs. This is in line with maximizing the useful distribution of free content, which is after all the purpose of the WMF.
Datafeed is one of the way we can make money. Which will allow us to pay the accountant. Which will allow us to provide all the financial information you are noisily requesting.
The millions of dollars in donations you've collected is another way to pay an accountant.
We're not reallt talking about the specific allocation of funds. The accountant's fees here are only symbolic of a greater basket of expenses. Donations are a fickle way of funding an organization. Some operations require more stable funding.
If you count in "actual cost" uniquely the bandwidth cost, $100 could make it. But running an organization uniquely counting as cost, the bandwidth, is seriously being out of it.
The organization is going to be run regardless of whether or not the datafeed is given. Counting all the costs of running the organization when calculating the marginal cost of providing a datafeed, is seriously being out of it.
On the basis of that model I would recommend that WMF invest in large quantities of Duck Tape.
Ec
On 5/20/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Anthony wrote:
On 5/20/07, Florence Devouard Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
Reselling one or two DVD would not be a big deal. However, engaging into a real reselling activity of a DVD using trademarks which you are not authorized to use for a commercial activity, is illegal.
Umm, how so? Check out eBay sometime, or half.com (have they gotten rid of that yet?). People resell DVDs using trademarks which they aren't authorized to use for a commercial activity *all the time*. Besides that, it's most certainly not illegal.
Oh? How can eBay possibly check out whether something offered for sale is pirated? What would it need to do just to check whether DRM has been disabled on a particularly? As long as they ask no questions nobody will tell them any lies. How many potential buyers are going to complain about pirate material when they could be getting a bargain? Not illegal sounds more like not real.
This doesn't have anything to do with DRM or piracy. Buying a DVD and then reselling that exact DVD is protected under the doctrine of first sale, which applies to both copyright and trademark law.
Anthony
This is horrible. The foundation is having enough trouble trying to run a charity, and now you're trying to run a business on top of that? The chair of the board doesn't even have a good idea where the revenue is coming from, save an old yearly financial statement which admittedly didn't provide enough details?
This is getting pathetic.
The WMF is a business, it's just a business that works to make free information for the world, rather than dividends for its shareholders. The operations side of things is exactly the same.
It does, however, seem rather bad that the chair of the board doesn't have access to regular accounts. I know it's normal to only publish accounts on a quarterly basis, but the board should be given them as often as they have board meetings (which is apparently weekly). The point of the board meeting is to decide what the foundation should do in the future - it is impossible to do that well if you don't know where the foundation is now.
On 5/19/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
It does, however, seem rather bad that the chair of the board doesn't have access to regular accounts.
I assumed that was one of the reasons Vishal was hired to "Prepare written presentations, reports, and term sheets".
Yours cordially, Jesse Martin (Pathoschild)
On 5/19/07, Jesse Martin (Pathoschild) pathoschild@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/19/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
It does, however, seem rather bad that the chair of the board doesn't have access to regular accounts.
I assumed that was one of the reasons Vishal was hired to "Prepare written presentations, reports, and term sheets".
If so, that's a serious conflict of interest. You don't want your business developer preparing reports on your current financial situation. The financial situation needs to be reported by someone whose interests lie in presenting an accurate picture, not in someone whose job is to improve that picture.
I assumed the written presentations and reports were more for sales pitches, not financial reporting.
Anthony
Anthony:
May I enquire as to why your e-mail address is wikilegal?
Cbrown1023
-----Original Message----- From: foundation-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:foundation-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Anthony Sent: Saturday, May 19, 2007 10:06 AM To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] [announcement] new staff member in businessdevelopment
On 5/19/07, Jesse Martin (Pathoschild) pathoschild@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/19/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
It does, however, seem rather bad that the chair of the board doesn't have access to regular accounts.
I assumed that was one of the reasons Vishal was hired to "Prepare written presentations, reports, and term sheets".
If so, that's a serious conflict of interest. You don't want your business developer preparing reports on your current financial situation. The financial situation needs to be reported by someone whose interests lie in presenting an accurate picture, not in someone whose job is to improve that picture.
I assumed the written presentations and reports were more for sales pitches, not financial reporting.
Anthony
_______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
On 5/19/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
This is horrible. The foundation is having enough trouble trying to run a charity, and now you're trying to run a business on top of that? The chair of the board doesn't even have a good idea where the revenue is coming from, save an old yearly financial statement which admittedly didn't provide enough details?
This is getting pathetic.
The WMF is a business, it's just a business that works to make free information for the world, rather than dividends for its shareholders. The operations side of things is exactly the same.
Whether or not "the WMF is a business" is a matter of terminology, but the operations side of a business and a charity is by no means exactly the same. The goals are different, so the operations are different.
For example, if the goal is to make free information for the world, shouldn't the task of the foundation's employees be to "analyze the price asked for certain services and implement a *decrease* if suitable"?
It does, however, seem rather bad that the chair of the board doesn't have access to regular accounts. I know it's normal to only publish accounts on a quarterly basis, but the board should be given them as often as they have board meetings (which is apparently weekly). The point of the board meeting is to decide what the foundation should do in the future - it is impossible to do that well if you don't know where the foundation is now.
Moreover, doing all your accounting at the end of the fiscal year is *more work* than doing it on a regular basis, and if your books are clean and up-to-date printing out financial statements once a month is trivial.
My apologies if calling things pathetic was over-the-top. But this is a serious matter which is long overdue to be resolved.
Anthony
A while ago I was brainstorming a bit and came up with a few ideas, some may be good and some may not (or not be feasible). I didn't read this whole thread so I might be repeating some ideas that have previously been mentioned as I came up with this stuff a long time ago. This is just some stuff I thought up in 10-15 minutes so they're not necessarily well thought out ideas but there might be some good ones lurking in there somewhere:
MediaWiki – platinum support? Support? Hosting service? Help corporations install mediawiki installations and help customize it to their needs (since they don't wanna do it themselves) meaning a hired dev (ie. Brion + someone else who could be hired as business expands, this is of course post-SUL as I suppose that's the most pressing issue at the moment) can develop (or modify) an extension\the mediawiki code specifically for that third party's use. The extension wouldn't be exclusively owned by the third party but rather released under a free license like the mediawiki code (at least I'm pretty sure that's under a free license).
· Amazon referral links – there are over 15,000 links on the English Wikipedia to amazon.com. Since they are already there, there's no reason not to append a referral to the link so the WMF gets some money every time someone buys something through that link. It's not extra advertising or anything of the sort as the amazon links are *already present*, this would just be better utilization of them for revenue purposes.
· Content – charge people and in return help them get copies of the databases, etc. the content is free but the bandwidth costs Wikimedia money and it should therefore be compensated for it (if not extra). Wikimedia could also possibly load the databases onto a new server for the other company that wants the content from wikipedia and have it all ready for actual use by that company.
· Help sites like answers.com outsource the whole mirroring Wikipedia business and leave it to Wikimedia (for a fee) – could be done much more efficiently and the articles on places like answers.com wouldn't get outdated so quickly.
· Start enforcing WMF's rights, see this search at walla.co.ilhttp://search.walla.co.il/?e=hew&q=%E2%27%E5%F8%E2%27%20%E1%E5%F9, walla show the Wikipedia logo (at least one of them which I believe is protected under trademark laws) and then redirect to wallapedia instead of redirecting to Wikipedia. They mislead people into thinking they're going to Wikipedia but instead the people are going to wallapedia where walla makes money off the ads (and in a way diverts potential donors away from Wikipedia)
-Yonatan
On 5/18/07, Florence Devouard Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
<snip>
I expect there are other ways to make business and to collect some cash.
Which ones would you suggest ?
Each of these systems has advantage and drawbacks. I above mentionned the advertisement system, but there are others which might be controversial. For example, if we have wikipedia logo printed on a game of trivial pursuit, will you be happy, or not ? If Microsoft is Wikimania sponsor, will you be happy, or not ?
Community can very largely provide input here.
<snip>
Ant
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
On 19/05/07, Yonatan Horan yonatanh@gmail.com wrote:
· Amazon referral links – there are over 15,000 links on the English Wikipedia to amazon.com. Since they are already there, there's no reason not to append a referral to the link so the WMF gets some money every time someone buys something through that link. It's not extra advertising or anything of the sort as the amazon links are *already present*, this would just be better utilization of them for revenue purposes.
Most direct amazon.com links should be removed, anyway, so this may not be much help...
Perhaps but the unavoidable fact is that we currently have 26,000 links to amazon, many of them being sources for pictures, sources in articles or otherwise non-policy violating links. Even if they are violating policy, if we aren't removing them, the referral might as well be added. Also, there's Special:Booksearch for which one could add the referral id to amazon\Barnes and Noble links.
-Yonatan
On 5/19/07, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
On 19/05/07, Yonatan Horan yonatanh@gmail.com wrote:
· Amazon referral links – there are over 15,000 links on the English Wikipedia to amazon.com. Since they are already there, there's
no
reason not to append a referral to the link so the WMF gets some money
every
time someone buys something through that link. It's not extra
advertising or
anything of the sort as the amazon links are *already present*, this
would
just be better utilization of them for revenue purposes.
Most direct amazon.com links should be removed, anyway, so this may not be much help...
--
- Andrew Gray andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
On 19/05/07, Yonatan Horan yonatanh@gmail.com wrote:
Perhaps but the unavoidable fact is that we currently have 26,000 links to amazon, many of them being sources for pictures, sources in articles or otherwise non-policy violating links. Even if they are violating policy, if we aren't removing them, the referral might as well be added. Also, there's Special:Booksearch for which one could add the referral id to amazon\Barnes and Noble links.
a) Adding it to special:booksearch, one centrally generated URL, is a relatively sensible move. Adding it to anywhere *else* means that we have to manually patrol each and every use of the URL in order to add the referral ID, and check it doesn't get changed to another referral ID, and deal with people who will editwar to keep them out
b) most material "sourced" from Amazon can be more appropriately sourced elsewhere
c) it is inappropriate to give our editors a motive, no matter how well-meaning, to encourage the use of links to *specific* sales sites in articles. It effectively will create a single, or a group of, recommended commercial partners.
d) as you say, a sizable fraction of those links are appropriate "image sourced from this URL" - and, as such, they link directly to the image generation URL. No-where to put a referral link, and no benefit to anyone from doing so...
a) I was thinking of a mediawiki implementation (and here's an evil idea, include it in the version everybody uses so they have to manually remove it if they don't want to). That avoids the whole edit war thing.
b) Good point, but I don't see anyone removing the 20k links to amazon we currently have.
c) Good point.
d) Actually they [should be] link[ing] to the page that has the image on it, not directly to the image on amazon's servers, at least from what I understand.
To everyone else, how about we try coming up with ideas on how to help the foundation make more money rather than perpetuating this off topic flame fest? I'd personally like to hear if any of my other ideas were good\bad\stupid.
-Yonatan
On 5/20/07, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
On 19/05/07, Yonatan Horan yonatanh@gmail.com wrote:
Perhaps but the unavoidable fact is that we currently have 26,000 links
to
amazon, many of them being sources for pictures, sources in articles or otherwise non-policy violating links. Even if they are violating policy,
if
we aren't removing them, the referral might as well be added. Also,
there's
Special:Booksearch for which one could add the referral id to
amazon\Barnes
and Noble links.
a) Adding it to special:booksearch, one centrally generated URL, is a relatively sensible move. Adding it to anywhere *else* means that we have to manually patrol each and every use of the URL in order to add the referral ID, and check it doesn't get changed to another referral ID, and deal with people who will editwar to keep them out
b) most material "sourced" from Amazon can be more appropriately sourced elsewhere
c) it is inappropriate to give our editors a motive, no matter how well-meaning, to encourage the use of links to *specific* sales sites in articles. It effectively will create a single, or a group of, recommended commercial partners.
d) as you say, a sizable fraction of those links are appropriate "image sourced from this URL" - and, as such, they link directly to the image generation URL. No-where to put a referral link, and no benefit to anyone from doing so...
--
- Andrew Gray andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
On 5/17/07, Florence Devouard Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
First, an announcement, then some thoughts
We just hired Vishal Pattel as part-time business developer. The positions responsabilities are:
- Identify and develop market strategies
- Generate ideas and initiatives that capitalize on existing and
prospective partner strengths 3) Consistently build a pipeline of new, revenue generating opportunities 4) Prepare written presentations, reports, and term sheets 5) Assist in contract negotiations 6) Assist with other tasks as needed(*)
(*) to be added to any staff member job description by default :-)
Vishal is already in the office, since he has been a part time intern since january 2007. We had expected to fill in this position in the future - not considered as urgent as the ED or legal coordinator positions - but it became more urgent after Danny's departure. I expect Vishal will both relieve other staff members from certain tasks, and focus all his attention on an area which was not always treated as a major area.
Immediate and very specific tasks he will be in charge, amongst other tasks related to the position, are :
- report on all business deals we currently are in (who, what, when, how
much).
- analyze the price asked for certain services and implement an increase
if suitable
- coordinate sponsorship for Wikimania
- follow up on brand marketing proposal
- be the general contact person for all the various (and sometimes
really amazing) business deals proposed to the Foundation
Business... is not a simple matter.
Indeed :) Congratulations to Vishal, and welcome. That's quite a job description for one person, considering the size and complexity of the Foundation. I am very glad that there is a move to hire people, even on a short- or part- time basis, to help with budgetary and business-related data collection and reporting, both for the community and the board -- this is an area where we have had a real need for a long time. Those who say that it's a shame that we don't already have good information are absolutely right -- it is, and so welcome to Vishal.
For the other areas -- partner ideas, coordinating sponsorship and revenue generation, and brand marketing -- I sincerely hope that those in the community who are interested in such things and have worked on them either at present or in the past will continue to do so *with* Vishal, both helping him understand what the current state of things are, and helping him work with the community of involved people. It would be great if Vishal can help ease coordination between the many people working on such business-related activities. For instance, there are half a dozen participants who have been working on Wikimania sponsorships for this year, and there are many other people who have worked on them in the past -- and there's a need for a consistent centralized list of what contacts we all have and who's done what that we could use from year to year for each new conference. A centralized "office" person like Vishal could really help get this going. Perhaps he could also work, with the community's help, on aggregating old (and often really good, but fallen by the wayside) ideas: [[m:Fundraising ideas]] and [[m:Three-year plan]], for instance.
In general: I don't know what's been envisioned for Vishal's position, but the right answer is certainly not to dump all the work of sponsorships or business development onto one relatively new person; instead, we should all let Vishal know what we've been doing and help him do a good job of organizing, reporting and coordination. This need for reporting would hold true no matter what our different visions of the Wikimedia "business" may be: more data about what is happening *now* is a good thing.
To that end, I'd like to be bold and extend an invitation to Vishal on behalf of the Wikimania team, the Special Projects Committee, and the meta community generally: we'd love to get to know you and to share old and new ideas about business development -- and please don't hesitate to introduce yourself, ask questions, and ask for help.
Phoebe
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org