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David Gerard

21 May 2007 21 May '07

5:23 p.m.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/21/technology/21link.html?_r=1&ref=techn… Did we come up with a suitable selection of really good mission-furthering things to do with $100 million? - d.

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Yonatan Horan

22 May 22 May

5:14 p.m.

Maybe a good idea would be to do something like the 1 page ad in the NYT Firefox did, to raise awareness of the fact that the Wikimedia Foundation needs donations. Generally people who read the New York Times can afford to spare a few bucks... On 5/21/07, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/21/technology/21link.html?_r=1&ref=techn… Did we come up with a suitable selection of really good mission-furthering things to do with $100 million? - d. _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

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Joe Szilagyi

5:30 p.m.

On 5/22/07, Yonatan Horan <yonatanh(a)gmail.com> wrote:

Maybe a good idea would be to do something like the 1 page ad in the NYT Firefox did, to raise awareness of the fact that the Wikimedia Foundation needs donations. Generally people who read the New York Times can afford to spare a few bucks...

Is the Firefox project fully and technically a non-profit? If so, perhaps approaching them, given their financial windfall, to see about placing a simple "You can use [HTML link to download Firefox] to edit Wikipedia" link in the global footer in exchange for a pledge of annual contributions in x amount? Such a link could be exempt from the nofollow. If they're a non-profit, this could be a good thing. Additional revenue for free for WP, and additional traffic (substantial) for Firefox. Regards, Joe http://www.joeszilagyi.com

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geni

5:39 p.m.

On 5/22/07, Joe Szilagyi <szilagyi(a)gmail.com> wrote:

Is the Firefox project fully and technically a non-profit? If so, perhaps approaching them, given their financial windfall, to see about placing a simple "You can use [HTML link to download Firefox] to edit Wikipedia" link in the global footer in exchange for a pledge of annual contributions in x amount? Such a link could be exempt from the nofollow. If they're a non-profit, this could be a good thing. Additional revenue for free for WP, and additional traffic (substantial) for Firefox.

Why would that be a good thing? I see no reason why we would to direct our readers to an inferior browser. -- geni

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Joe Szilagyi

5:45 p.m.

On 5/22/07, geni <geniice(a)gmail.com> wrote:

If they're a non-profit, this could be a good thing. Additional revenue

for

free for WP, and additional traffic (substantial) for Firefox.

Why would that be a good thing? I see no reason why we would to direct our readers to an inferior browser.

Inferior to what? ;) I'm not interested in a "this browser is better than..." argument. Firefox is the major "free" browser on the market, for the widest array of operating systems (Windows, Apple, *nixes). My suggestion is based on that. If another non-commercial project had theoretical cash to burn, and their goals weren't incompatible with Wikipedia's, I'd make the same basic suggestion. Regards, Joe http://www.joeszilagyi.com

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Gary Kirk

5:55 p.m.

Why would that be a good thing? I see no reason why we would to direct our readers to an inferior browser. -- geni

Seriously? I've never heard anyone claim Firefox was inferior to Internet Explorer (got ahead of myself - what browser do you use, geni?). Not getting into the great browser wars, but FF is a very commonly-used browser among editors if not the majority of users (at school, offices and so on) so a partnership with the Mozilla Foundation might be good. -- Gary Kirk

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geni

6:31 p.m.

On 5/22/07, Gary Kirk <gary.kirk(a)gmail.com> wrote:

Seriously? I've never heard anyone claim Firefox was inferior to Internet Explorer (got ahead of myself - what browser do you use, geni?).

Multiple since it makes it easy to run multiple accounts. I'm liking the current generation of sea monkey (although it does tend to try and claim wikipedia isn't a word). And of course I'm hearing good things about opera although my version is hopelessly outdated now.

Not getting into the great browser wars, but FF is a very commonly-used browser among editors if not the majority of users (at school, offices and so on) so a partnership with the Mozilla Foundation might be good.

In the short term. What you do when a second rate browser offers you twice the cash? -- geni

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Joe Szilagyi

6:39 p.m.

On 5/22/07, geni <geniice(a)gmail.com> wrote:

Multiple since it makes it easy to run multiple accounts. I'm liking the current generation of sea monkey (although it does tend to try and claim wikipedia isn't a word). And of course I'm hearing good things about opera although my version is hopelessly outdated now.

Seamonkey ironically is another free product of the Mozilla Foundation (who makes Firefox). I suppose we could just do a Mozilla link, rather than a Firefox one, but that's neither here nor there yet. The question is, "Is something like this with another non-profit a good idea?" In the short term. What you do when a second rate browser offers you

twice the cash?

If the theoretical deal with the Moz Foundation is non-exclusive, review it. Is the new offer another non-profit non-commercial project that is not incompatible with Wikipedia goals? Keep in mind that there aren't exactly many big free open-source non-commercial non-profits that are 1) seriously high profile (Wikipedia, Firefox, and...?) 2) Flush with cash (Firefox, and...?). This scenario is highly, highly unlikely. Firefox/Moz Foundation to my knowledge is the only such possible partner. Regards, Joe http://www.joeszilagyi.com

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geni

6:48 p.m.

On 5/22/07, Joe Szilagyi <szilagyi(a)gmail.com> wrote:

Seamonkey ironically is another free product of the Mozilla Foundation (who makes Firefox).

I know.

I suppose we could just do a Mozilla link, rather than a Firefox one, but that's neither here nor there yet. The question is, "Is something like this with another non-profit a good idea?"

Firefox has that relationship with Mozilla Corp.

In the short term. What you do when a second rate browser offers you twice the cash?

If the theoretical deal with the Moz Foundation is non-exclusive, review it. Is the new offer another non-profit non-commercial project that is not incompatible with Wikipedia goals? Keep in mind that there aren't exactly many big free open-source non-commercial non-profits that are 1) seriously high profile (Wikipedia, Firefox, and...?) 2) Flush with cash (Firefox, and...?). This scenario is highly, highly unlikely. Firefox/Moz Foundation to my knowledge is the only such possible partner.

IBM write an open source browser (or purchase opera) and offer you a significant chunk of cash to link to it. What do you do? -- geni

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Joe Szilagyi

6:57 p.m.

On 5/22/07, geni <geniice(a)gmail.com> wrote:

I suppose we could just do a Mozilla link, rather than a Firefox one, but that's neither here nor there yet. The question is, "Is something like this with another non-profit a good idea?"

Firefox has that relationship with Mozilla Corp.

Which was done for financial transparency and convenience, and does conflict with us. Why do you keep pounding on that? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation As explained in a MozillaZine article<http://www.mozillazine.org/talkback.html?article=7085>85>: "The Mozilla Foundation will ultimately control the activities of the Mozilla Corporation and will retain its 100 percent ownership of the new subsidiary. Any profits made by the Mozilla Corporation will be invested back into the Mozilla project. There will be no shareholders, no stock options will be issued and no dividends will be paid. The Mozilla Corporation will not be floating on the stock market and it will be impossible for any company to take over or buy a stake in the subsidiary. The Mozilla Foundation will continue to own the Mozilla trademarks and other intellectual property and will license them to the Mozilla Corporation. The Foundation will also continue to govern the source code repository and control who is allowed to check in." IBM write an open source browser (or purchase opera) and offer you a

significant chunk of cash to link to it. What do you do?

Again, are we exclusive with Firefox on this theoretical deal? Is IBM a non-profit open source non-commericial? Regards, Joe http://www.joeszilagyi.com

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Gary Kirk

6:50 p.m.

On 22/05/07, geni <geniice(a)gmail.com> wrote:

On 5/22/07, Gary Kirk <gary.kirk(a)gmail.com> wrote:

Seriously? I've never heard anyone claim Firefox was inferior to Internet Explorer (got ahead of myself - what browser do you use, geni?).

Multiple since it makes it easy to run multiple accounts. I'm liking the current generation of sea monkey (although it does tend to try and claim wikipedia isn't a word). And of course I'm hearing good things about opera although my version is hopelessly outdated now.

Pocket PC only gives me the option of IE (installed, non-updateable IE 4...) or Opera, which is lovely.

Not getting into the great browser wars, but FF is a very commonly-used browser among editors if not the majority of users (at school, offices and so on) so a partnership with the Mozilla Foundation might be good.

In the short term. What you do when a second rate browser offers you twice the cash?

That's a very good point, and reminds me of the Virgin Unite problem, in that probably we could never have kept everybody happy with that. Of course, if the second-rate browser has cash to throw at us, it should be using it to develop itself ;-)

-- geni

_______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

-- Gary Kirk

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Joe Szilagyi

6:02 p.m.

On 5/22/07, Joe Szilagyi <szilagyi(a)gmail.com> wrote:

If they're a non-profit, this could be a good thing. Additional revenue for free for WP, and additional traffic (substantial) for Firefox.

Just to clarify for those unaware: http://www.mozilla.org/foundation/partnerships.html "Our mission is to develop world class, open source, fully standards compliant Internet technologies and applications and to ensure that our software is broadly adopted so that we can ensure that more than 500 million Internet users will continue to have meaningful choice for web browsers, e-mail software and more. We can't achieve these goals by ourselves, so we partner with for-profit and non-profit organizations that share our vision. The Mozilla project has developed a range of partnerships with organizations ranging from peers in the open source community, start-up companies that are building businesses based on Mozilla technologies and some of the world's leading IT vendors, including IBM, Sun Microsystems and Red Hat." Regards, Joe http://www.joeszilagyi.com

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David Gerard
Gary Kirk
geni
Joe Szilagyi
Yonatan Horan