... have been posted here : http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolutions#July_2006
Resolution:election officials passed 20 July 2006 :drafted by the communication committee. Appointement of the election committee for september elections.
Resolution ombudsperson checkuser passed 23 July 2006 :creation of the committee in charge of investigating privacy policy abuse reports. Appointment of the original members. The committee is free to organise its own rules and in particular to define the tools it needs (such as checkuser status on meta to have access to checkuser logs. Registration to checkuser list. Creation of OTRS specific queue where such requests may be redirected etc...) Wegge, please, can you contact the two other members and see what needs to be done ?
Resolution:WiktionaryZ passed 23 July 2006 :from the special project committee. Agree to host the WiktionaryZ project. Brion will see to this *after* Wikimania
Resolution:Hardware_Purchase_Jul-06 passed 24 July 2006 :upon proposition from the technical committee. Approximately $61,440 worth of hardware
ant
Good luck with the raising of the $60,000!
Will WiktionaryZ eventually replace the current Wiktionary?
On 7/25/06, Anthere Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
... have been posted here : http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolutions#July_2006
Resolution:election officials passed 20 July 2006 :drafted by the communication committee. Appointement of the election committee for september elections.
Resolution ombudsperson checkuser passed 23 July 2006 :creation of the committee in charge of investigating privacy policy abuse reports. Appointment of the original members. The committee is free to organise its own rules and in particular to define the tools it needs (such as checkuser status on meta to have access to checkuser logs. Registration to checkuser list. Creation of OTRS specific queue where such requests may be redirected etc...) Wegge, please, can you contact the two other members and see what needs to be done ?
Resolution:WiktionaryZ passed 23 July 2006 :from the special project committee. Agree to host the WiktionaryZ project. Brion will see to this *after* Wikimania
Resolution:Hardware_Purchase_Jul-06 passed 24 July 2006 :upon proposition from the technical committee. Approximately $61,440 worth of hardware
ant
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
On 7/26/06, James Hare messedrocker@gmail.com wrote:
Good luck with the raising of the $60,000!
Will WiktionaryZ eventually replace the current Wiktionary?
It's too soon to answer that since the new software is very much still in the beta phase. What I'm hoping is that the current Wiktionary communities will try it out and get involved in making that decision.
Angela.
On 7/25/06, Angela beesley@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/26/06, James Hare messedrocker@gmail.com wrote:
Good luck with the raising of the $60,000!
Will WiktionaryZ eventually replace the current Wiktionary?
It's too soon to answer that since the new software is very much still in the beta phase. What I'm hoping is that the current Wiktionary communities will try it out and get involved in making that decision.
Pre-alpha is more like it. ;-) We're not nearly feature-complete (only terminological functionality for now), we haven't done a systematic security and quality review of the code yet, and we're not up to date with the latest MediaWiki. Still, things have been progressing nicely: We now have a fairly flexible data and user interface model, are working on a generic versioning layer, and have some interesting top secret projects as well ;-). Most importantly, people have recently been given the ability to add new expressions/meanings, and started to systematically do so for a list of 1000 English words:
http://wiktionaryz.org/Portal:eng/List_of_1000_basic_English_words
I'm very happy that Wikimedia is willing to host the project. Let's discuss the exact operational parameters at Wikimania.
Erik
Erik Moeller wrote:
On 7/25/06, Angela beesley@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/26/06, James Hare messedrocker@gmail.com wrote:
Good luck with the raising of the $60,000!
Will WiktionaryZ eventually replace the current Wiktionary?
It's too soon to answer that since the new software is very much still in the beta phase. What I'm hoping is that the current Wiktionary communities will try it out and get involved in making that decision.
Pre-alpha is more like it. ;-) We're not nearly feature-complete (only terminological functionality for now), we haven't done a systematic security and quality review of the code yet, and we're not up to date with the latest MediaWiki. Still, things have been progressing nicely: We now have a fairly flexible data and user interface model, are working on a generic versioning layer, and have some interesting top secret projects as well ;-). Most importantly, people have recently been given the ability to add new expressions/meanings, and started to systematically do so for a list of 1000 English words:
http://wiktionaryz.org/Portal:eng/List_of_1000_basic_English_words
I'm very happy that Wikimedia is willing to host the project. Let's discuss the exact operational parameters at Wikimania.
Erik _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Erik,
Is there somewhere the wiktionary language/messages files are available so I can translate them into Cherokee and Uto-Aztecan for the Wiktionary and Wikibooks esspecially. I can hand hack them to map to the pages, but I noticed the Wikiversity stuff has a lot of additions.
Thanks,
Jeff
On 7/25/06, Jeff V. Merkey jmerkey@wolfmountaingroup.com wrote:
Is there somewhere the wiktionary language/messages files are available so I can translate them into Cherokee and Uto-Aztecan for the Wiktionary and Wikibooks esspecially. I can hand hack them to map to the pages, but I noticed the Wikiversity stuff has a lot of additions.
Much of WiktionaryZ UI content will be localized through WiktionaryZ itself (language names, relation names, etc.). There will be some UI strings which will need traditional MediaWiki localization, but right now, the UI is not stable enough to define these.
I think you should talk to Gerard Meijssen about the use of Betawiki for localization: http://nike.users.idler.fi/betawiki/Etusivu
It's currently a bit confusing, but I do think the approach of having a single community/wiki focused on localizing the MediaWiki UI makes sense.
Erik
Hoi Jeff, WiktionaryZ aims to eat very much it's own dogfood. When there is a good localisation done for MediaWiki and when this is maintained, you have all the core stuff. The rest is a matter of making sure that WiktionaryZ will have translations for the DefinedMeanings that will be used for the labels that will eventually be used.
The words that will be used are things like language names, linguistic terminology like noun, verb etc.
Yes, we aim to support all languages. The Neapolitan language and the Lombard language is already supported because of the interest we have for Italian minor languages. Cherokee and Uto-Aztecan are also welcome.. Adding languages is at this stage something that a developer has to do. When there is an interface so that we can easily add more languages, we will once some criteria have been met. One thing we need is work done on the localisation of MediaWiki.
Thanks, GerardM
On 7/25/06, Jeff V. Merkey jmerkey@wolfmountaingroup.com wrote:
Erik Moeller wrote:
On 7/25/06, Angela beesley@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/26/06, James Hare messedrocker@gmail.com wrote:
Good luck with the raising of the $60,000!
Will WiktionaryZ eventually replace the current Wiktionary?
It's too soon to answer that since the new software is very much still in the beta phase. What I'm hoping is that the current Wiktionary communities will try it out and get involved in making that decision.
Pre-alpha is more like it. ;-) We're not nearly feature-complete (only terminological functionality for now), we haven't done a systematic security and quality review of the code yet, and we're not up to date with the latest MediaWiki. Still, things have been progressing nicely: We now have a fairly flexible data and user interface model, are working on a generic versioning layer, and have some interesting top secret projects as well ;-). Most importantly, people have recently been given the ability to add new expressions/meanings, and started to systematically do so for a list of 1000 English words:
http://wiktionaryz.org/Portal:eng/List_of_1000_basic_English_words
I'm very happy that Wikimedia is willing to host the project. Let's discuss the exact operational parameters at Wikimania.
Erik _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Erik,
Is there somewhere the wiktionary language/messages files are available so I can translate them into Cherokee and Uto-Aztecan for the Wiktionary and Wikibooks esspecially. I can hand hack them to map to the pages, but I noticed the Wikiversity stuff has a lot of additions.
Thanks,
Jeff _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
GerardM wrote:
Hoi Jeff, WiktionaryZ aims to eat very much it's own dogfood. When there is a good localisation done for MediaWiki and when this is maintained, you have all the core stuff. The rest is a matter of making sure that WiktionaryZ will have translations for the DefinedMeanings that will be used for the labels that will eventually be used.
The words that will be used are things like language names, linguistic terminology like noun, verb etc.
Yes, we aim to support all languages. The Neapolitan language and the Lombard language is already supported because of the interest we have for Italian minor languages. Cherokee and Uto-Aztecan are also welcome.. Adding languages is at this stage something that a developer has to do. When there is an interface so that we can easily add more languages, we will once some criteria have been met. One thing we need is work done on the localisation of MediaWiki.
Thanks, GerardM
OK. I think I understand, so Where is a language file for Wikiversity and Wikibooks I can get for MediaWiki 7.1 and start translating. I believe Erik said it was not ready for general release -- this being said, I would like to make some progress in getting Wikigadugi Wikibooks setup.
Let me know.
Thanks
Jeff
On 7/25/06, Jeff V. Merkey jmerkey@wolfmountaingroup.com wrote:
Erik Moeller wrote:
On 7/25/06, Angela beesley@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/26/06, James Hare messedrocker@gmail.com wrote:
Good luck with the raising of the $60,000!
Will WiktionaryZ eventually replace the current Wiktionary?
It's too soon to answer that since the new software is very much still in the beta phase. What I'm hoping is that the current Wiktionary communities will try it out and get involved in making that decision.
Pre-alpha is more like it. ;-) We're not nearly feature-complete (only terminological functionality for now), we haven't done a systematic security and quality review of the code yet, and we're not up to date with the latest MediaWiki. Still, things have been progressing nicely: We now have a fairly flexible data and user interface model, are working on a generic versioning layer, and have some interesting top secret projects as well ;-). Most importantly, people have recently been given the ability to add new expressions/meanings, and started to systematically do so for a list of 1000 English words:
http://wiktionaryz.org/Portal:eng/List_of_1000_basic_English_words
I'm very happy that Wikimedia is willing to host the project. Let's discuss the exact operational parameters at Wikimania.
Erik _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Erik,
Is there somewhere the wiktionary language/messages files are available so I can translate them into Cherokee and Uto-Aztecan for the Wiktionary and Wikibooks esspecially. I can hand hack them to map to the pages, but I noticed the Wikiversity stuff has a lot of additions.
Thanks,
Jeff _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Hoi, The question if WiktionaryZ will replace Wiktionary, is very much a question that you have to ask to the members of the Wiktionary communities AND to the Wiktionary communities themselves. At this stage there is no way that WiktionaryZ can replace any Wiktionary; we just do not have the desired functionality yet. As far as WiktionaryZ is concerned, the Wiktionary projects will exist as long as people are interested in maintaining them.
The functionality we do have in WiktionaryZ is already quite powerful. You can consider an Expression as a focus of looking at the data of a DefinedMeaning. When an error exists in the existing content, this error can be fixed and it will be correct when seen from ANY of the other related Expressions.
It is also really nice to see how much new content has already been created, http://wiktionaryz.org/Portal:eng/List_of_1000_basic_English_words gives you some idea .. The number of languages that we support is not big but it is growing.. We are currently looking for people interested in Russian, Japanese and Bulgarian to name a few .. or Slovenian, Slovak and Finnish to name a few more :)
Thanks, GerardM
On 7/25/06, James Hare messedrocker@gmail.com wrote:
Good luck with the raising of the $60,000!
Will WiktionaryZ eventually replace the current Wiktionary?
On 7/25/06, Anthere Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
... have been posted here : http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolutions#July_2006
Resolution:election officials passed 20 July 2006 :drafted by the communication committee. Appointement of the election committee for september elections.
Resolution ombudsperson checkuser passed 23 July 2006 :creation of the committee in charge of investigating privacy policy abuse reports. Appointment of the original members. The committee is free to organise its own rules and in particular to define the tools it needs (such as checkuser status on meta to have access to checkuser logs. Registration to checkuser list. Creation of OTRS specific queue where such requests may be redirected etc...) Wegge, please, can you contact the two other members and see what needs to be done ?
Resolution:WiktionaryZ passed 23 July 2006 :from the special project committee. Agree to host the WiktionaryZ project. Brion will see to this *after* Wikimania
Resolution:Hardware_Purchase_Jul-06 passed 24 July 2006 :upon proposition from the technical committee. Approximately $61,440 worth of hardware
ant
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
James Hare wrote:
Good luck with the raising of the $60,000!
We have that sum in the bank. So do not worry :-)
The last purchase was done in february : http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution_Hardware_Purchase_Feb-06
ant
Will WiktionaryZ eventually replace the current Wiktionary?
On 7/25/06, Anthere Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
... have been posted here : http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolutions#July_2006
Resolution:election officials passed 20 July 2006 :drafted by the communication committee. Appointement of the election committee for september elections.
Resolution ombudsperson checkuser passed 23 July 2006 :creation of the committee in charge of investigating privacy policy abuse reports. Appointment of the original members. The committee is free to organise its own rules and in particular to define the tools it needs (such as checkuser status on meta to have access to checkuser logs. Registration to checkuser list. Creation of OTRS specific queue where such requests may be redirected etc...) Wegge, please, can you contact the two other members and see what needs to be done ?
Resolution:WiktionaryZ passed 23 July 2006 :from the special project committee. Agree to host the WiktionaryZ project. Brion will see to this *after* Wikimania
Resolution:Hardware_Purchase_Jul-06 passed 24 July 2006 :upon proposition from the technical committee. Approximately $61,440 worth of hardware
ant
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
On 7/25/06, Anthere Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
James Hare wrote:
Good luck with the raising of the $60,000!
We have that sum in the bank. So do not worry :-)
The last purchase was done in february : http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution_Hardware_Purchase_Feb-06
ant
Someone needs to suggest Resolution Stop Acquiring So Many Assets, considering all the legal issues that still aren't resolved.
Anthony
Anthony wrote:
On 7/25/06, Anthere Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
James Hare wrote:
Good luck with the raising of the $60,000!
We have that sum in the bank. So do not worry :-)
The last purchase was done in february : http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution_Hardware_Purchase_Feb-06
ant
Someone needs to suggest Resolution Stop Acquiring So Many Assets, considering all the legal issues that still aren't resolved.
You've just suggested it! :-) Great!
Ec
You have to be kidding. Are you seriously suggesting the Foundation stop buying servers?
On 7/27/06, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Anthony wrote:
On 7/25/06, Anthere Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
James Hare wrote:
Good luck with the raising of the $60,000!
We have that sum in the bank. So do not worry :-)
The last purchase was done in february : http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution_Hardware_Purchase_Feb-06
ant
Someone needs to suggest Resolution Stop Acquiring So Many Assets, considering all the legal issues that still aren't resolved.
You've just suggested it! :-) Great!
Ec
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
On 7/27/06, Brad Patrick bradp.wmf@gmail.com wrote:
You have to be kidding. Are you seriously suggesting the Foundation stop buying servers?
IANAA but
Once you factor in depreciation the logical end point of his position is probably that the foundation should turn liquid assets into servers and related products as quickly as posible.
On 7/27/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/27/06, Brad Patrick bradp.wmf@gmail.com wrote:
You have to be kidding. Are you seriously suggesting the Foundation
stop
buying servers?
IANAA but
Once you factor in depreciation the logical end point of his position is probably that the foundation should turn liquid assets into servers and related products as quickly as posible.
Layman explanation as to why?
mboverload
On 7/27/06, mboverload mboverload@gmail.com wrote:
Layman explanation as to why?
mboverload
The foudation can either stick to the liquid asset option which means renting servers and keeping enough cash on hand to pay for say a years worth of rent. That is a fair bit of cash and might make the foundation a worthwhile target. The other option is to keep the cash in the form of servers which are rather less worthwhile for people to try and aquire since they lose value over time. The servers might have cost x to buy but after a year they could be down to less than 1/2X but that doesn't really bother the foundation since it still needs the servers.
Win a court case and get say $100,000 ok. Win a court case and get a load of servers worth say $50K which you then have to try an sell is rather less good.
On 7/27/06, mboverload mboverload@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/27/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/27/06, Brad Patrick bradp.wmf@gmail.com wrote:
You have to be kidding. Are you seriously suggesting the Foundation
stop
buying servers?
IANAA but
Once you factor in depreciation the logical end point of his position is probably that the foundation should turn liquid assets into servers and related products as quickly as posible.
Layman explanation as to why?
mboverload
I'm really not sure what geni was trying to say, but the two main reasons I think Wikimedia should try to limit its assets are 1) to increase board accountability and 2) to avoid being a good target for lawsuits.
The first reason I suppose is the more important one. Right now three of the five Wikimedia board members are not elected. The board is accountable to the public largely because it relies on donations from the community. As the foundation acquires more and more assets, they become less and less accountable to the public. Sure, there need to be reserves in place, but in the budgets that were released before Wikimedia started hiding them from the public a very large portion (something like 75%) was being spent on capital expenditures.
Anthony
Are we sure it's a processing problem and not a bandwidth problem? It seems to me that they need some more bandwidth, with new servers being second to that.
On 7/27/06, Anthony wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
On 7/27/06, mboverload mboverload@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/27/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/27/06, Brad Patrick bradp.wmf@gmail.com wrote:
You have to be kidding. Are you seriously suggesting the Foundation
stop
buying servers?
IANAA but
Once you factor in depreciation the logical end point of his position is probably that the foundation should turn liquid assets into servers and related products as quickly as posible.
Layman explanation as to why?
mboverload
I'm really not sure what geni was trying to say, but the two main reasons I think Wikimedia should try to limit its assets are 1) to increase board accountability and 2) to avoid being a good target for lawsuits.
The first reason I suppose is the more important one. Right now three of the five Wikimedia board members are not elected. The board is accountable to the public largely because it relies on donations from the community. As the foundation acquires more and more assets, they become less and less accountable to the public. Sure, there need to be reserves in place, but in the budgets that were released before Wikimedia started hiding them from the public a very large portion (something like 75%) was being spent on capital expenditures.
Anthony _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
On 7/28/06, mboverload mboverload@gmail.com wrote:
Are we sure it's a processing problem and not a bandwidth problem? It seems to me that they need some more bandwidth, with new servers being second to that.
I think it is fairly safe to say the devs know where the problem is. Certianly they reacted fast enough when we did exceed our bandwidth.
I just talked to the developers, they said they're fine right now for processing AND bandwidth, bandwidth has not been a problem.
On 7/27/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/28/06, mboverload mboverload@gmail.com wrote:
Are we sure it's a processing problem and not a bandwidth problem? It
seems
to me that they need some more bandwidth, with new servers being second
to
that.
I think it is fairly safe to say the devs know where the problem is. Certianly they reacted fast enough when we did exceed our bandwidth.
-- geni _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
mboverload wrote:
I just talked to the developers, they said they're fine right now for processing AND bandwidth, bandwidth has not been a problem.
There's not really such a thing as not having enough bandwidth, for our purposes.
When you hear us talk about bandwidth, the issue under discussion is not whether we have enough, but simply ensuring that we're getting a good deal for our money (our money, of course, being donors' money).
That's something that's being actively worked on.
As for processing, we have no difficulties at this time in that regard either, but that doesn't mean we won't need more machines.
We're simply always balancing these factors:
* Increased load from growth in use of the site * Decreased load from improvements to the efficiency of the software * Decreased load from obtaining additional hardware
There's no problem per se; it's simply a natural consequence of growth in usage that we require more resources over time. A newspaper company would need to buy more printing presses and rent more delivery trucks as circulation increased; for us it's no different.
Of course in a for-profit business that ran on subscriptions or ad revenue, there would (hopefully!) be a direct correlation between additional page views and additional income; for us it's less direct, but hopefully more eyeballs will continue to mean more donors until the foundation comes up with another business plan. ;)
Hopefully, we can continue to keep ahead of the curve a little bit, rather than allowing hardware bottlenecks to become a visible problem as they have several times in the past.
Our next purchase is additional caching proxy servers; these are essential to keeping pages flowing since they handle most of the visitor and image traffic, and the current ones are expected to start dragging as the back-to-school traffic peak comes at the end of the summer.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
On 7/27/06, Brion Vibber brion@pobox.com wrote:
Our next purchase is additional caching proxy servers; these are essential to keeping pages flowing since they handle most of the visitor and image traffic, and the current ones are expected to start dragging as the back-to-school traffic peak comes at the end of the summer.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
Not sure if this is related, but I have seen more squid errors than I've gotten before.
mboverload wrote:
On 7/27/06, Brion Vibber brion@pobox.com wrote:
Our next purchase is additional caching proxy servers; these are essential to keeping pages flowing since they handle most of the visitor and image traffic, and the current ones are expected to start dragging as the back-to-school traffic peak comes at the end of the summer.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
Not sure if this is related, but I have seen more squid errors than I've gotten before.
It's not related. Squid error messages are what you get when squid is working and something else isn't. When squid isn't working, you just get timeouts or refused connections, it's left up to the browser to report an error to the user.
The something else that isn't working is typically a segfault in PHP or APC, which squid reports as ERR_ZERO_SIZE_OBJECT.
If squid is pushed over its capacity, the result is poor page view performance, although there's half a dozen things other things that can cause that. Identifying a system bottleneck can be a complex task.
-- Tim Starling
Anthony wrote:
snip
Sure, there need to be reserves in place, but in the budgets that were released before Wikimedia started hiding them from the public a very large portion (something like 75%) was being spent on capital expenditures.
I am confused. How can budgets or at least expenditures be hidden from the public indefinitely?
Are there insufficient audit and reporting requirements in Florida law to assure us that the Wikimedia Foundation's Finances will eventually be made public?
regards, lazyquasar
On 7/28/06, Michael R. Irwin michael_irwin@verizon.net wrote:
Are there insufficient audit and reporting requirements in Florida law to assure us that the Wikimedia Foundation's Finances will eventually be made public?
I assumed that all nonprofits had to be completely open, or is that only for taxes? I don't know jack shit about anything outside personal finances. Can someone enlighten me?
-mboverload
geni wrote:
On 7/27/06, Brad Patrick bradp.wmf@gmail.com wrote:
You have to be kidding. Are you seriously suggesting the Foundation stop buying servers?
IANAA but
Once you factor in depreciation the logical end point of his position is probably that the foundation should turn liquid assets into servers and related products as quickly as posible.
That wouldn't do it. Cash and equipment are both assets on a balance sheet. If it ever came to that, either could be used to satisfy a debt. Buying hardware just so that it can have an opportunity to depreciate does not seem like a sensible strategy. Although it's important to plan for equipment breakdown and obsolescence there is also a value to delaying purchases. The same $10,000 that you might spend prematurely today for a desired piece of equipment might give you a more advanced piece of similar equipment a year from now.
Ec
Whats the name of the Wikimedia lawyer again? I searched for in in gmail but I'm really not sure what to search for =P
On 7/28/06, mboverload mboverload@gmail.com wrote:
Whats the name of the Wikimedia lawyer again? I searched for in in gmail but I'm really not sure what to search for =P
Brad Patrick. He's already comented.
On 7/28/06, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
That wouldn't do it. Cash and equipment are both assets on a balance sheet. If it ever came to that, either could be used to satisfy a debt. Buying hardware just so that it can have an opportunity to depreciate does not seem like a sensible strategy.
It reduces the value of your balance sheet. which reduces your atrativeness as a target.
Although it's important to plan for equipment breakdown and obsolescence there is also a value to delaying purchases. The same $10,000 that you might spend prematurely today for a desired piece of equipment might give you a more advanced piece of similar equipment a year from now.
But we need the equipment now.
One of several strategies which may be considered is the plausibility of separating operations from trademark/IP and having a different corporate structure for them under the Board umbrella. Once we have completed our audit, we will consider the advantages of those different situations. These are preliminary concepts, not actual plans at this time.
Domas Mituzas wrote:
It reduces the value of your balance sheet. which reduces your atrativeness as a target.
hi!!!! does that mean that all physical operations should be made as separate legal body, and all the blame would go to another one? ;-)
Domas
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Brad Patrick wrote:
One of several strategies which may be considered is the plausibility of separating operations from trademark/IP and having a different corporate structure for them under the Board umbrella. Once we have completed our audit, we will consider the advantages of those different situations. These are preliminary concepts, not actual plans at this time.
I can get behind that approach, and look forward to the completed audit. In the meantime different ideas should be welcomed.
Ec
geni wrote:
On 7/28/06, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
That wouldn't do it. Cash and equipment are both assets on a balance sheet. If it ever came to that, either could be used to satisfy a debt. Buying hardware just so that it can have an opportunity to depreciate does not seem like a sensible strategy.
It reduces the value of your balance sheet. which reduces your atrativeness as a target.
Making purchases where the only reason is to reduce the asset value on the balance sheet does not strike me as sound fiscal management.
Although it's important to plan for equipment breakdown and obsolescence there is also a value to delaying purchases. The same $10,000 that you might spend prematurely today for a desired piece of equipment might give you a more advanced piece of similar equipment a year from now.
But we need the equipment now.
That's usually a good reason for buying new equipment.
On 7/27/06, Brad Patrick bradp.wmf@gmail.com wrote:
You have to be kidding. Are you seriously suggesting the Foundation stop buying servers?
I seriously think they should look into leasing them instead.
Anthony
Anthony wrote:
On 7/27/06, Brad Patrick bradp.wmf@gmail.com wrote:
You have to be kidding. Are you seriously suggesting the Foundation stop buying servers?
I seriously think they should look into leasing them instead.
I don't know if that's necessarily the solution. In the absence of proper and timely financial statements it is difficult to make an evaluation from that perspective. We keep hearing about buying more servers, but precious little is done to project needs on the basis of the life expectancy of the hardware.
There are also frequent concerns expressed about legal suits that WMF could be faced with. Even though I feel that at least some of those concerns are farfetched, good risk management would suggest that ways of protecting the assets be devised. Developing an arm's length relationship between the ownership of the assets and any potential liability would serve us well.
Leasing could be a part of this through a sale and leaseback arrangement with a separately incorporated for profit company.
The feigned, "You have to be kidding," approach reflects a failure to properly consider these issues.
Ec
I'm just not comfortable with leasing period.
I find Wikipedia to be too important to leave in anyone's hands other than the immediate foundation. A company that leases servers may easily give in to legal challenges or other backhanded threats. We'd have to have legal advice about how this would effect the lawsuit situation and consider what we would be giving up.
On 7/28/06, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Anthony wrote:
On 7/27/06, Brad Patrick bradp.wmf@gmail.com wrote:
You have to be kidding. Are you seriously suggesting the Foundation
stop
buying servers?
I seriously think they should look into leasing them instead.
I don't know if that's necessarily the solution. In the absence of proper and timely financial statements it is difficult to make an evaluation from that perspective. We keep hearing about buying more servers, but precious little is done to project needs on the basis of the life expectancy of the hardware.
There are also frequent concerns expressed about legal suits that WMF could be faced with. Even though I feel that at least some of those concerns are farfetched, good risk management would suggest that ways of protecting the assets be devised. Developing an arm's length relationship between the ownership of the assets and any potential liability would serve us well.
Leasing could be a part of this through a sale and leaseback arrangement with a separately incorporated for profit company.
The feigned, "You have to be kidding," approach reflects a failure to properly consider these issues.
Ec
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
mboverload wrote:
I'm just not comfortable with leasing period.
I find Wikipedia to be too important to leave in anyone's hands other than the immediate foundation. A company that leases servers may easily give in to legal challenges or other backhanded threats. We'd have to have legal advice about how this would effect the lawsuit situation and consider what we would be giving up.
Leasing does not necesarily mean going through an existing for-profit leasing company. Many of them would certainly give cause to your discomfort. A totally new company established for the purpose of leasing back the hardware would do just fine. Whatever contractual arrangements are made could reflect the values of the community and a break even business plan.
Ec
On 7/29/06, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
mboverload wrote:
I'm just not comfortable with leasing period.
I find Wikipedia to be too important to leave in anyone's hands other than the immediate foundation. A company that leases servers may easily give in to legal challenges or other backhanded threats. We'd have to have legal advice about how this would effect the lawsuit situation and consider what we would be giving up.
Leasing does not necesarily mean going through an existing for-profit leasing company. Many of them would certainly give cause to your discomfort. A totally new company established for the purpose of leasing back the hardware would do just fine. Whatever contractual arrangements are made could reflect the values of the community and a break even business plan.
It seems rather far fetched to me that a company with a big leasing contract like this is going to just decide to break its contract and confiscate its servers. I mean, it'd be easier for someone to threaten the ISPs providing the bandwidth (which might very well be willing to provide a reasonable leasing contract themselves). Add in a few different leasing companies and it's even more far fetched.
And even if the leased servers did get confiscated, the whole point of leasing is that not a whole lot would be lost. The site would obviously suffer some downtime in this highly unlikely scenario, of course.
Anthony
I'm just not comfortable with leasing period. I find Wikipedia to be too important to leave in anyone's hands other than the immediate foundation. A company that leases servers may easily give in to legal challenges or other backhanded threats. -- mboverload
It seems rather far fetched to me that a company with a big leasing contract like this is going to just decide to break its contract and confiscate its servers. -- Anthony
See "FBI seizes Indymedia servers" http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/10/08/1097089554894.html
A company that leases servers may easily give in to legal challenges or other backhanded threats.
Can I just clarify for people who may not be aware of such things, but there are *two* basic forms of leasing.
One is where the company 'selling' the equipment provides the leasing facility, such that the equipment remains the property of that company during the lease (basically what has been discussed)
The other is a Finance lease, where you 'buy' the finance separately, use that finance to pay the equipment supplier and own the equipment yourself, subject to payments to the bank or other provider of the finance.
(That is trying to simplify it, anyway!)
Alison Wheeler
On 7/29/06, Alison Wheeler wikimedia@alisonwheeler.com wrote:
A company that leases servers may easily give in to legal challenges or other backhanded threats.
Can I just clarify for people who may not be aware of such things, but there are *two* basic forms of leasing.
One is where the company 'selling' the equipment provides the leasing facility, such that the equipment remains the property of that company during the lease (basically what has been discussed)
The other is a Finance lease, where you 'buy' the finance separately, use that finance to pay the equipment supplier and own the equipment yourself, subject to payments to the bank or other provider of the finance.
In most cases, they're the same thing, because when the seller provides financing it's usually through a separate financing company operating behind the scenes -- and if not, they usually discount the transaction to a financing company shortly after the lease funds.
Kelly
Alison Wheeler wrote:
A company that leases servers may easily give in to legal challenges or other backhanded threats.
Can I just clarify for people who may not be aware of such things, but there are *two* basic forms of leasing.
One is where the company 'selling' the equipment provides the leasing facility, such that the equipment remains the property of that company during the lease (basically what has been discussed)
The other is a Finance lease, where you 'buy' the finance separately, use that finance to pay the equipment supplier and own the equipment yourself, subject to payments to the bank or other provider of the finance.
I don't see the latter definition as applicable. It's a question of why we would consider leasing in the first place. The latter is more suited to companies with a cash flow problem, or where there are tax motivated considerations. For us, the underlying motivation is asset protection.
Ec
On 7/30/06, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Alison Wheeler wrote:
A company that leases servers may easily give in to legal challenges or other backhanded threats.
Can I just clarify for people who may not be aware of such things, but there are *two* basic forms of leasing.
One is where the company 'selling' the equipment provides the leasing facility, such that the equipment remains the property of that company during the lease (basically what has been discussed)
The other is a Finance lease, where you 'buy' the finance separately, use that finance to pay the equipment supplier and own the equipment yourself, subject to payments to the bank or other provider of the finance.
I don't see the latter definition as applicable. It's a question of why we would consider leasing in the first place. The latter is more suited to companies with a cash flow problem, or where there are tax motivated considerations. For us, the underlying motivation is asset protection.
What I was initially thinking about was closer to the second, though, especially in terms of Wikipedia, the two are rather similar, since Wikipedia doesn't own its own hosting facility in the first place.
The primary motivation, as I said, would be accountability. To put it another way, if Wikipedia doesn't have to worry about cash flow, then it's time to take the donation request off of every page, and there won't be a need for any fundraisers ever again.
Anthony
Jack wrote:
I'm just not comfortable with leasing period. I find Wikipedia to be too important to leave in anyone's hands other than the immediate foundation. A company that leases servers may easily give in to legal challenges or other backhanded threats. -- mboverload
It seems rather far fetched to me that a company with a big leasing contract like this is going to just decide to break its contract and confiscate its servers.
See "FBI seizes Indymedia servers" http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/10/08/1097089554894.html
Nothing we do can prevent this kind of activity from the American KGB.
Ec
Ray Saintonge wrote:
Jack wrote:
I'm just not comfortable with leasing period. I find Wikipedia to be too important to leave in anyone's hands other than the immediate foundation. A company that leases servers may easily give in to legal challenges or other backhanded threats. -- mboverload
It seems rather far fetched to me that a company with a big leasing contract like this is going to just decide to break its contract and confiscate its servers.
See "FBI seizes Indymedia servers" http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/10/08/1097089554894.html
Nothing we do can prevent this kind of activity from the American KGB.
Ec
Who said it had to be the FBI for that matter. The State of Florida is just as capable of messing around like this as well (or other local law enforcement agencies), and likely to screw things up when they try to physcially seize the equipment... or more so since they don't tend to have the technical background of the FBI.
I think anyone who thinks Wikipedia should be more famous and more popular should be excited, rather than fearful, about the prospect of an out-of-the-blue confiscation of our servers or shutdown. Such an event would make us more powerful than ever.
I have said this before, but it is worth repeating... we have very powerful friends in the U.S. government, in business, in charitable foundations, in major law schools, etc.
We need to expect that sooner or later, despite our best efforts to always do the right thing and be kind to everyone, there will be some kind of frivolous lawsuit against us. Such is the nature of life in a litigious nation, and we need to take this seriously in every part of our planning, of course.
But the idea that the US government is suddenly going to shut us down (a) is so far fetched that it is hard to even imagine it seriously and (b) would be something which would make our traffic and popularity triple or quadruple within just a few weeks, worldwide.
Robert Scott Horning wrote:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
Jack wrote:
I'm just not comfortable with leasing period. I find Wikipedia to be too important to leave in anyone's hands other than the immediate foundation. A company that leases servers may easily give in to legal challenges or other backhanded threats. -- mboverload
It seems rather far fetched to me that a company with a big leasing contract like this is going to just decide to break its contract and confiscate its servers.
See "FBI seizes Indymedia servers" http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/10/08/1097089554894.html
Nothing we do can prevent this kind of activity from the American KGB.
Ec
Who said it had to be the FBI for that matter. The State of Florida is just as capable of messing around like this as well (or other local law enforcement agencies), and likely to screw things up when they try to physcially seize the equipment... or more so since they don't tend to have the technical background of the FBI.
Jimmy Wales wrote:
I think anyone who thinks Wikipedia should be more famous and more popular should be excited, rather than fearful, about the prospect of an out-of-the-blue confiscation of our servers or shutdown. Such an event would make us more powerful than ever.
See "FBI seizes Indymedia servers" http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/10/08/1097089554894.html
Nothing we do can prevent this kind of activity from the American KGB.
Ec
Who said it had to be the FBI for that matter. The State of Florida is just as capable of messing around like this as well (or other local law enforcement agencies), and likely to screw things up when they try to physcially seize the equipment... or more so since they don't tend to have the technical background of the FBI.
I would have to agree completely with you here. I would point out, though, that law enforcement is also made up of mere mortals who sometimes do make mistakes and sometimes don't know who they are going after until it is too late. That and I've seen stranger things before. Wikipedia is still new enough that non-tech savvy people still don't have a clue as to what Wikipedia really is.
I'll also say that if you think the donations are fairly good right now to keep the server farm going, you ain't seen nothing compared to what a legal defense fund would be like if the WMF were directly challenged with a lawsuit based on Wikipedia content. Confiscation of servers would cause an already huge defense fund to simply hire the best lawyers on the planet, like former solicitor generals and law school deans that money simply can't buy.
On 8/1/06, Robert Scott Horning robert_horning@netzero.net wrote:
I'll also say that if you think the donations are fairly good right now to keep the server farm going, you ain't seen nothing compared to what a legal defense fund would be like if the WMF were directly challenged with a lawsuit based on Wikipedia content. Confiscation of servers would cause an already huge defense fund to simply hire the best lawyers on the planet, like former solicitor generals and law school deans that money simply can't buy.
And just to point out what should be obvious, that would be a terrible thing. Millions of dollars pouring out of the pockets of Wikipedia supporters and into the pockets of "the best lawyers on the planet", would be a bad thing.
Anthony
Jimmy Wales wrote:
I think anyone who thinks Wikipedia should be more famous and more popular should be excited, rather than fearful, about the prospect of an out-of-the-blue confiscation of our servers or shutdown. Such an event would make us more powerful than ever.
The thing that makes me most fearful about rapid growth is that we could too easily lose sight of the factors that produced that growth. Fame, popularity and power can too easily become poison pills.
I have said this before, but it is worth repeating... we have very powerful friends in the U.S. government, in business, in charitable foundations, in major law schools, etc.
These social assets are especially comforting and handy to have lurking in the background when bureaucracy starts to get silly. When we keep our own house in order that makes them even more powerful for us. They are probably even more important when it relates to how we can influence policy in areas close to our fundamental principles.
We need to expect that sooner or later, despite our best efforts to always do the right thing and be kind to everyone, there will be some kind of frivolous lawsuit against us. Such is the nature of life in a litigious nation, and we need to take this seriously in every part of our planning, of course.
Absolutely. But this should not require heroic measures to avoid the more far-fetched scenarios. We should generally base decisions on what the law really says, and not on someone's fearful speculations. We individually vary considerably in how much risk we tolerate. If someone is willing to take on an issue, and it can be framed in such a way that it benefits the collective without putting it at unnecessary peril, he should have the green light.
But the idea that the US government is suddenly going to shut us down (a) is so far fetched that it is hard to even imagine it seriously and (b) would be something which would make our traffic and popularity triple or quadruple within just a few weeks, worldwide.
Of course, though realistic multi-purpose back-up plans are always worth cinsidering.
Ec
On 7/29/06, Jack jackdt@gmail.com wrote:
I'm just not comfortable with leasing period. I find Wikipedia to be too important to leave in anyone's hands other than the immediate foundation. A company that leases servers may easily give in to legal challenges or other backhanded threats. -- mboverload
It seems rather far fetched to me that a company with a big leasing contract like this is going to just decide to break its contract and confiscate its servers. -- Anthony
See "FBI seizes Indymedia servers" http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/10/08/1097089554894.html
Umm, that was the FBI. They can seize leased servers just the same as they can seize owned ones.
Ray Saintonge wrote:
mboverload wrote:
I'm just not comfortable with leasing period.
I find Wikipedia to be too important to leave in anyone's hands other than the immediate foundation. A company that leases servers may easily give in to legal challenges or other backhanded threats. We'd have to have legal advice about how this would effect the lawsuit situation and consider what we would be giving up.
Leasing does not necesarily mean going through an existing for-profit leasing company. Many of them would certainly give cause to your discomfort. A totally new company established for the purpose of leasing back the hardware would do just fine. Whatever contractual arrangements are made could reflect the values of the community and a break even business plan.
Ec
Considering the efforts that WMF is putting into operating correctly in full compliance with Florida and Federal U.S. law; I find it hard to believe that our potential legal liabilities are large enough to justify complicating our community/corporate structure.
To casual reviewers considering donation this type of thing could look like an attempt to siphon money out of the WMF or raise questions why we feel it is necessary.
Consider the absolute worst case, litigation goes against us and WMF is forced to liquidate all assets and cease operations.
The major asset of the project/program/community/foundation is the FDL'ed databases, GPL'ed software, and community of contributors, developers, and other volunteers.
A new Foundation could be back up and operating at current levels within a quarter or two with an aggressive public funding drive for hardware.
If the legal risks are really so high, perhaps we should seek a partnership or understanding with a major university such as Oxford, or Yale, or _______ that in the event of legal catastrophe the site could be brought back up on their servers until the community had organized a new nonprofit to host its projects and acquired and setup new servers and bandwidth.
Perhaps the Electronic Frontiers Foundation or SourceForge would be interested in some kind of reciprocal agreement?
regards, lazyquasar
On 29/07/06, Michael R. Irwin michael_irwin@verizon.net wrote:
The major asset of the project/program/community/foundation is the FDL'ed databases, GPL'ed software, and community of contributors, developers, and other volunteers.
A new Foundation could be back up and operating at current levels within a quarter or two with an aggressive public funding drive for hardware.
If a Wikimedia chapter in, say, Sweden were to run servers much like the ones in France. Would it be feasible to get these running as database servers quickly, in case your scenario were to happen?
So if Wikimedia and its assets were taken down in the US, those in other countries could quickly replace them?
Oldak Quill wrote:
On 29/07/06, Michael R. Irwin michael_irwin@verizon.net wrote:
The major asset of the project/program/community/foundation is the FDL'ed databases, GPL'ed software, and community of contributors, developers, and other volunteers.
A new Foundation could be back up and operating at current levels within a quarter or two with an aggressive public funding drive for hardware.
If a Wikimedia chapter in, say, Sweden were to run servers much like the ones in France. Would it be feasible to get these running as database servers quickly, in case your scenario were to happen?
So if Wikimedia and its assets were taken down in the US, those in other countries could quickly replace them?
Bottleneck would probably be the professional expertise and effort the WMF pays for routine reliable staff effort in organizational matters and for administrator and development support.
Perhaps if the Swedish/X Chapter is organized properly; a management reserve or emergency operations plan could contracted for and funded in advance such that sufficient Swedish currency is in Swedish/X financial accounts (earning appropriate returns relative to required on demand liquidity) to hire/contract the WMF's technical and administrative staff to fly to Sweden for a few months and setup and maintain the new servers?
Once the WMF or new equivalent in U.S. was back up and running they could rehire the technical and administrative staff and reestablish operations in Florida or equivalent. To be really efficient the individual staff contracts could require that all useful tourist photos be submitted to the commons at the earliest reasonable convenience prior to receipt of final performance bonus.
Perhaps this could structured in advance as part of the operations plan. Setup the independent Swedish chapter/corporation/foundation/nonprofit in advance with read only mirror service kept up to date with a periodic database update via ..... what? DVD? Digitial tape? Backups were still under a gigabye back when I messed with off-site backups.
Obviously the above is a layman's view of how to structure a reserve operations capacity for transitional purposes. The legal beagles and the Board would have to do the international contracts so it is legally fullproof. The technical staff would have to figure an efficient mirror or startup capacity and how to transfer data reliably and routinely such that they could flyin and buy more hardware, bandwidth, install the latest snapshot and have the Swedish site up and operational in minimun time.
Maybe the WMF could ask for technical proposal and bids from any associated international chapters with an appropriate non profit organization in place and pick the best overall deal for the WMF's donated funds to be expended upon.
The situation is fraught with possibilities. Probably depends mostly on what the Board and the WMF staff feel would be useful, reasonable (responsible cost effective expenditure of donated funds) and airtight from a legal standpoint.
I still have a hard time envisioning serious legal difficulties considering the statement of conditions each contributer agrees to prior to submittal of material and the fact that we now have a paid operations staff ready and willing to delete alleged offending material or situations and investigate in detail later. It would seem like any serious slander or copyright or other legal issues mostly belong to the contributor as long as the WMF is careful to respond with due diligence to complaints and/or particularly to subpoenas and court orders.
I think the above offsite backup would be a reasonable thing to begin considering at this point even disregarding legal concerns.
I mean the rest of the world does not want Wikimedia projects to be offline indefinitely just because some terrorist organization with a collective I.Q. greater than 25 sneaks a few dirty (radioactive dust, smallpox, EMP, power grid failures, rampaging domestic politicians, whatever) bombs/incidents into key U.S. cities in the 95% of shipping containers that are not currently inspected prior to entry into U.S. ports.
Heck, if I want to do some research after hearing rumors from the Media Moguls about some disaster in Florida (or other key internet hub location like say New York; California {San Andreas fault}; the Midwest {Yellowstone Supervolcano}; random super tsanamis or asteroid stikes; it would suit me just fine if up to date mirrors capable of handling the full emergency world wide load from me and other gawkers were online while the WMF Board and staff followed emergency directions to the nearest interstate evacuation route.
OTOH, some people view a little redundancy in information systems and emergency preparedness system wide as a complete waste of resources. Better to just keep a spare Wikipedia DVD, dehydrated dihydrogen oxide, and last year's portable computer with proper power supply adapter in the back of your vehicle and forget about kibitzing over jammed comm systems in the unlikely event of an emergency.
regards, lazyquasar
Michael R. Irwin wrote:
Oldak Quill wrote:
On 29/07/06, Michael R. Irwin michael_irwin@verizon.net wrote:
The major asset of the project/program/community/foundation is the FDL'ed databases, GPL'ed software, and community of contributors, developers, and other volunteers.
A new Foundation could be back up and operating at current levels within a quarter or two with an aggressive public funding drive for hardware.
If a Wikimedia chapter in, say, Sweden were to run servers much like the ones in France. Would it be feasible to get these running as database servers quickly, in case your scenario were to happen?
So if Wikimedia and its assets were taken down in the US, those in other countries could quickly replace them?
Bottleneck would probably be the professional expertise and effort the WMF pays for routine reliable staff effort in organizational matters and for administrator and development support.
Only if our existing experts are in jail.
Perhaps if the Swedish/X Chapter is organized properly; a management reserve or emergency operations plan could contracted for and funded in advance such that sufficient Swedish currency is in Swedish/X financial accounts (earning appropriate returns relative to required on demand liquidity) to hire/contract the WMF's technical and administrative staff to fly to Sweden for a few months and setup and maintain the new servers?
Why just Sweden? Brazil could be another alternative. More than one alternative would be even better.
Once the WMF or new equivalent in U.S. was back up and running they could rehire the technical and administrative staff and reestablish operations in Florida or equivalent.
Going back straightaway into the jaws of the problem is a little risky.
To be really efficient the individual staff contracts could require that all useful tourist photos be submitted to the commons at the earliest reasonable convenience prior to receipt of final performance bonus.
That's just like some companies who believe that they have a say over what their employees can do in their own homes.
Perhaps this could structured in advance as part of the operations plan. Setup the independent Swedish chapter/corporation/foundation/nonprofit in advance with read only mirror service kept up to date with a periodic database update via ..... what? DVD? Digitial tape? Backups were still under a gigabye back when I messed with off-site backups.
Why not multiple distributed backups.
Obviously the above is a layman's view of how to structure a reserve operations capacity for transitional purposes. The legal beagles and the Board would have to do the international contracts so it is legally fullproof. The technical staff would have to figure an efficient mirror or startup capacity and how to transfer data reliably and routinely such that they could flyin and buy more hardware, bandwidth, install the latest snapshot and have the Swedish site up and operational in minimun time.
Maybe the WMF could ask for technical proposal and bids from any associated international chapters with an appropriate non profit organization in place and pick the best overall deal for the WMF's donated funds to be expended upon.
The direct funding for that back-up facility should ideally come from sources in that country.
The situation is fraught with possibilities. Probably depends mostly on what the Board and the WMF staff feel would be useful, reasonable (responsible cost effective expenditure of donated funds) and airtight from a legal standpoint.
There is no such thing as an air tight legal opinion.
I still have a hard time envisioning serious legal difficulties considering the statement of conditions each contributer agrees to prior to submittal of material and the fact that we now have a paid operations staff ready and willing to delete alleged offending material or situations and investigate in detail later. It would seem like any serious slander or copyright or other legal issues mostly belong to the contributor as long as the WMF is careful to respond with due diligence to complaints and/or particularly to subpoenas and court orders.
The circumstances that would trigger a move to servers in an other country would be highly unusual. A simple copyright infringement lawsuit is not likely to get that serious. Having paid staff working on search and destroy missions would compromise the argument that they are only running an ISP. I have no problem with due dilligence in the circumstances you describe, but even that should be guided by even-handedness rather than panic.Complaints clearly need to be investigated, but immediate deletions based on allegations without standing should have the investigation precede the deletion.
I think the above offsite backup would be a reasonable thing to begin considering at this point even disregarding legal concerns.
These are still Plan-B emergency considerations.
I mean the rest of the world does not want Wikimedia projects to be offline indefinitely just because some terrorist organization with a collective I.Q. greater than 25 sneaks a few dirty (radioactive dust, smallpox, EMP, power grid failures, rampaging domestic politicians, whatever) bombs/incidents into key U.S. cities in the 95% of shipping containers that are not currently inspected prior to entry into U.S. ports.
True enough, but one has to remember the large number of forces working to thwart the terrorists by matching their I.Q. This only proves that 25+25<50. Emirate ports may be a little more effective than U.S. ones.
Heck, if I want to do some research after hearing rumors from the Media Moguls about some disaster in Florida (or other key internet hub location like say New York; California {San Andreas fault}; the Midwest {Yellowstone Supervolcano}; random super tsanamis or asteroid stikes; it would suit me just fine if up to date mirrors capable of handling the full emergency world wide load from me and other gawkers were online while the WMF Board and staff followed emergency directions to the nearest interstate evacuation route.
To think that we will soon have another asteroid to wipe out the dinosaurs is pure wishful thinking.
OTOH, some people view a little redundancy in information systems and emergency preparedness system wide as a complete waste of resources. Better to just keep a spare Wikipedia DVD, dehydrated dihydrogen oxide, and last year's portable computer with proper power supply adapter in the back of your vehicle and forget about kibitzing over jammed comm systems in the unlikely event of an emergency.
Wasn't the internet invented in the first place to provide redundancy for military communications?
Ray Saintonge wrote:
Michael R. Irwin wrote:
Oldak Quill wrote: snip
To be really efficient the individual staff contracts could require that all useful tourist photos be submitted to the commons at the earliest reasonable convenience prior to receipt of final performance bonus.
That's just like some companies who believe that they have a say over what their employees can do in their own homes.
Not at all. If you pay for an emergency business trip you can define the business requirements in the contract. The former employees in limbo while the presumed legal issues are settled can accept or refuse the terms and responsibilities cited in the contract.
The above and similar types of issues illustrate why sometime prenegotiated contracts and prepaid binding options can be a good idea. In an emergency one does not wish to be debating details with critical resources. After an emergency is resolved one does not wish to be in middle of vast disagreements between unreasonable nitpickers and naysayers regarding methods and responsibilities. Often a formal review cycle is setup to keep responsible nitpickers and naysayers not easily satisfied or diverted busy with defining or suggesting improvements the next emergency contract to placed on option.
Perhaps this could structured in advance as part of the operations plan. Setup the independent Swedish chapter/corporation/foundation/nonprofit in advance with read only mirror service kept up to date with a periodic database update via ..... what? DVD? Digitial tape? Backups were still under a gigabye back when I messed with off-site backups.
Why not multiple distributed backups.
Cash, resources, attention span, etc? Probably all the usual issues in a startup organization. I am not a board member, staff member or a regular on this list so I really cannot provide details why deficient, standard, or excellent business practices have or have not been followed in the past few years.
Typically the path to multiple distributed backups lies through the first and second offsite facilities or capabilities.
Besides this an issue of how we manage our growth. Are we a neat little hobby of occasional benefit to someone too cheap or incapable of buying real information resources or an indispensable international information resource consulted or used regularly by diplomats, government bureaus, and students around the world?
In the first case little backup is required. A little space can be leased from a staff employee with some extra room in a tempature controlled garage or attic and quarterly backups can be taken home.
In the second, a school district outside of the disaster zone might reasonably expect for its hundred dollar annual donation the data is reliably available 365/24/7. A diplomat might expect that her government's allied government million dollar annual grant provides reliable access when she is in middle of critical international negotiations regarding WTO quotas or estimated troop requirements at borders..
Obviously the above is a layman's view of how to structure a reserve operations capacity for transitional purposes. The legal beagles and the Board would have to do the international contracts so it is legally fullproof. The technical staff would have to figure an efficient mirror or startup capacity and how to transfer data reliably and routinely such that they could flyin and buy more hardware, bandwidth, install the latest snapshot and have the Swedish site up and operational in minimun time.
Maybe the WMF could ask for technical proposal and bids from any associated international chapters with an appropriate non profit organization in place and pick the best overall deal for the WMF's donated funds to be expended upon.
The direct funding for that back-up facility should ideally come from sources in that country.
Why? Do we currently require all donations spent in the U.S. to come from the U.S.?
Believe it or not many potential donors, particularly large institutional ones, will lookover an organization to see if it has more than a web page or web site before making a large donation. If it has mission statement like a herd of intellectuals but an infrastructure capable of supporting a couple of tree shrews; they will often move on without dropping any money.
Perhaps we should seek a "freedom grant" from some deep pockets and put full facilities on each inhabited continent just as soon as they have adequate international bandwidth to handle the cutover load in case of a local or remote emergency taken down some of the seven facilities. Or we could locate them by active internet pocket.
Technical desgin criteria probably must follow from the funders' purposes to gain approval. Are we attempting to demonstrate U.S. committment to is "atoms for peace" program by disseminating U.S. nuclear data worldwide or supporting China's entrepreneurial efforts to build Africa's local economy in pursuit of profits?
The situation is fraught with possibilities. Probably depends mostly on what the Board and the WMF staff feel would be useful, reasonable (responsible cost effective expenditure of donated funds) and airtight
from a legal standpoint.
There is no such thing as an air tight legal opinion.
No but there is such a thing as an excellent legal position. "Airtight" means you are satisfied you can demonstrate to potential adversaries they (or their lawyers) do not want the issue in court. Failing that, a reasonable judge will usually decide in our favor. Failing that, the supreme court will probably resolve the case in your favor while making it clear where they intend to take U.S. regulation of information flows in the near future. Failing that, you restructure you operation to be in compliance with new precedents while deciding whether to fight on or happily comply with new clarity in application of U.S. law.
Most people will settle for a reasonable response to legititmate concerns. Most judges will decide an obvious case correctly. If it is not an obvious case then someone must pioneer new precedent setting cases. If we are a neato internet club then we probably do not want to. If we are a premier pioneering organization designing the next century's information flows between all of humanity ..... then we will probably be involved in some court cases eventually no matter what. Better start saving some pennies when we can, in our management reserve, to deal with emergencies.
BTW, have we started some kind of endowment fund so the WMF will eventually have stable funding adequate to its position as a premier provider of all free human information to all of humanity?
I still have a hard time envisioning serious legal difficulties considering the statement of conditions each contributer agrees to prior to submittal of material and the fact that we now have a paid operations staff ready and willing to delete alleged offending material or situations and investigate in detail later. It would seem like any serious slander or copyright or other legal issues mostly belong to the contributor as long as the WMF is careful to respond with due diligence to complaints and/or particularly to subpoenas and court orders.
The circumstances that would trigger a move to servers in an other country would be highly unusual. A simple copyright infringement lawsuit is not likely to get that serious. Having paid staff working on search and destroy missions would compromise the argument that they are only running an ISP.
Compromise how? I am fairly certain that if I contact other large internet organizations with a legitimate concern regarding unsubstantiated slanderous material or material demonstrably from a book or report or essay I wrote or posted to the internet without releasing rights to the material that the ISP would respond quickly.
If they failed to respond then I simply list them along with whatever infomation I have about the original offending poster and start tracking expenses and time while I consider how to find a lawyer.
A lot of U.S. publishers and authors already have lawyers so satisfying them useful action is underway might be critical to staying out of court. Upon establishing to our satisfaction they are incorrect we can simply put the material back and file applicable information regarding our actions; just in case they are truly deluded and take the thing to court confident they will win the day.
I have no problem with due dilligence in the circumstances you describe, but even that should be guided by even-handedness rather than panic.Complaints clearly need to be investigated, but immediate deletions based on allegations without standing should have the investigation precede the deletion.
Semantics. Considering the ease with which we can restore deleted materials it seems rather irrelevent to me. Besides, the process should be designed to satisfy the people with reasonable complaints when possible. We are attempting to make friends and influence people by providing accurate legal free information, not win as many cases in court annually as possible.
I think the above offsite backup would be a reasonable thing to begin considering at this point even disregarding legal concerns.
These are still Plan-B emergency considerations.
Do we have a published Plan-B emergency plan or outline somewhere or is this best kept tip top secret to prevent harrassment from well informed malefactors?
snip
snip
To think that we will soon have another asteroid to wipe out the dinosaurs is pure wishful thinking.
No. Recent comet strikes on Jupiter demonstrated nicely that it hits when gravity tells it to .... not when alleged sophonts citing multi million year periods suspected between recent strikes and the cosmological principle of mediocrity claim that it cannot (anytime soon, no preparation required in current budget cycle).
OTOH, some people view a little redundancy in information systems and emergency preparedness system wide as a complete waste of resources. Better to just keep a spare Wikipedia DVD, dehydrated dihydrogen oxide, and last year's portable computer with proper power supply adapter in the back of your vehicle and forget about kibitzing over jammed comm systems in the unlikely event of an emergency.
Wasn't the internet invented in the first place to provide redundancy for military communications?
Yes, TCP/IP more precisely. Plus robustness and cost effectiveness and a few other buzzwords. Its development was funded by DARPA and early implemention involved U.S. universities and military installations. Its original purpose was to allow U.S. military computers to be easily and quickly reconnected around communications hubs vaporized in nuclear strikes by military technicians stringing phone line point to point.
regards, lazyquasar
Michael R. Irwin wrote:
Oldak Quill wrote:
So if Wikimedia and its assets were taken down in the US, those in other countries could quickly replace them?
Once the WMF or new equivalent in U.S. was back up and running they could rehire the technical and administrative staff and reestablish
Please, this starts to sound like a cult drifting off into "if we have a fortress, they can never get us", ending up like those in Waco, Texas. (The 1993 events described as [[en:Waco Siege]].)
What exactly are you trying to achieve? If you want immunity against legal threats in the western world (and for what outlaw purpose would you want this?), you probably have to relocate to North Korea, Syria or Zimbabwe.
On 31/07/06, Lars Aronsson lars@aronsson.se wrote:
What exactly are you trying to achieve? If you want immunity against legal threats in the western world (and for what outlaw purpose would you want this?), you probably have to relocate to North Korea, Syria or Zimbabwe.
Since we're being a little unrealistic here anyway, I would suggest we develop some kind of distributed hosting system to supplement our servers. It would be similar to those distributed computing clients (Folding@home, Seti@home, &c.), except the client would be using some of your disc space and bandwidth instead of your computing power.
But then, I'm only dreaming.
Oldak Quill wrote:
On 31/07/06, Lars Aronsson lars@aronsson.se wrote:
What exactly are you trying to achieve? If you want immunity against legal threats in the western world (and for what outlaw purpose would you want this?), you probably have to relocate to North Korea, Syria or Zimbabwe.
Since we're being a little unrealistic here anyway, I would suggest we develop some kind of distributed hosting system to supplement our servers. It would be similar to those distributed computing clients (Folding@home, Seti@home, &c.), except the client would be using some of your disc space and bandwidth instead of your computing power.
But then, I'm only dreaming.
Both of those systems use centralized database servers and coordination bandwidth. Main advantage is in distibuting processing. For example, when I was running Seti@Home and Folding@Home a processing packet would take a couple of minutes to download and then spend days processing in the screensaver before linking to upload results and download another processing packet.
Might be useful if we ever have heavy processing requirements such as creating and maintaining read only controlled files in a distributed content cache for serving to the public unless they request editable version.
You might find http://www.dijjer.org/ of interest. This a plugin that provides distributed caching. It would probably take some modifications to our server software to return a dijjer based URL to a cached version if the user is not editing and the current editable version when they click the edit button. As I recall the Dijjer URL contacts a Dijjer server of some kind so modification might be required to talk to our own Dijjer URL server/tracker to be able to guarantee decent performance.
Oceanstore (currently prototyped as "Pond") or BitTorrent (particularly in serving large backup files) might offer some reduced server loading advantages if we ever get to the point of serving controlled or official articles to the non editing public or casual users while editing and improving in the background at the central WMF project server farm. Last time I checked it uses a large number of servers to establish core funtionality. IIRC individual desktops can be used for caching reliable chunk of information
Likewise: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNUnet except I think it distibutes files to caches not reliability enhanced chunks for later reassembly and service to requestor.
later, lazyquasar
Lars Aronsson wrote:
Michael R. Irwin wrote:
Oldak Quill wrote:
So if Wikimedia and its assets were taken down in the US, those in other countries could quickly replace them?
Once the WMF or new equivalent in U.S. was back up and running they could rehire the technical and administrative staff and reestablish
Please, this starts to sound like a cult drifting off into "if we have a fortress, they can never get us", ending up like those in Waco, Texas. (The 1993 events described as [[en:Waco Siege]].)
What exactly are you trying to achieve?
I am trying to achieve reliable future access to the WMF data for anyone who wishes to establish a future fork to take up where WMF leaves off should a calamity befall the WMF.
If you want immunity against legal threats in the western world (and for what outlaw purpose would you want this?), you probably have to relocate to North Korea, Syria or Zimbabwe.
Personally I do not think we need or want immunity, nor do I think it is possible. In my view compliance is reasonable and required.
I do think making damn sure that the millions of manhours of donated effort spent developing the Wikimedia project data can not be partially or totally wasted by the simple expedient of purchasing all media and data rights of the WMF from a liquidation authority for a few thousand dollars and then filing nuisance lawsuits against anyone posting or publishing online the entire dataset from backups.
If you do not like the above scenario make up your own and consider how to defuse it.
The datasets the WMF supports online are just now getting to the point of potentially depressing sales of millions and then hundreds of millions and then billions of dollars of published materials in the U.S.A annually. The publishing industry in the U.S. is not going to roll over and modernize any easier than the record labels, Disney, U.S.Government; and the other DRM proponents did. They can buy access to the U.S. Congress just as easy as anyone else.
Nor is it unlikely that the U.S. government might like a return to more easily controlled media focal points. I do not know if you have noticed; but as official policy, both foreign and domestic, the U.S. now employs torture, has secret courts (an oxy moron), and has an executive branch which does not even meet its responsibility under federal law to tell a secret court within 3 days why it backdated the ability for secret police raids, searches, wiretaps, etc. This is a substantial departure from the typical U.S. citizen's mental image of the "land of the free".
Some people claim this is standard practice while at War while others claim this is a substantial departure from U.S. policy, laws, and expectations. The one thing that is clear is that the "War on Terror" is likely to be finished when the office of the U.S. president (POTUS) says it is finished. It is not prudent to be relying exclusively on the Constitution of the United States for the ability to publicly publish useful information potentially detrimental to large business or government interests in the U.S.
If this is a nonissue because duplicate dataset updates are routinely sent to various chapters that have agreed to serve as out of U.S. control zones backups and reestablish internet access within six months of WMF shutdown; then maybe someone can say so publicly and we can leave all risk management issues and elimination of single points of failure to the God King and his designated Trustees and staff.
BTW, is a completed audit on the WMF's first few years of operation posted somewhere online where interested parties such as myself can review it?
If it is not posted, but available upon request, then I would like to request copies or be placed upon the distribution list so I get copies when they become available.
later, lazyquasar
Michael R. Irwin wrote:
If this is a nonissue because duplicate dataset updates are routinely sent to various chapters that have agreed to serve as out of U.S. control zones backups
And what I'm telling you is that "out of U.S. control zones" are essentially North Korea, Syria, and Zimbabwe. If the U.S. govt were to close down the Wikimedia Foundation, then a backup in Sweden would not help you one bit. Libya will not help you, because Khadaffi is far to eager to improve relations to the western world. That is, in a fight between you and the U.S. Govt, Khadaffi would side with the later.
Venezuela's Chavez might want to help you, but will he be able to?
You better start building that fort near Waco. You're on your own.
Lars Aronsson wrote:
Michael R. Irwin wrote:
If this is a nonissue because duplicate dataset updates are routinely sent to various chapters that have agreed to serve as out of U.S. control zones backups
And what I'm telling you is that "out of U.S. control zones" are essentially North Korea, Syria, and Zimbabwe. If the U.S. govt were to close down the Wikimedia Foundation, then a backup in Sweden would not help you one bit. Libya will not help you, because Khadaffi is far to eager to improve relations to the western world. That is, in a fight between you and the U.S. Govt, Khadaffi would side with the later.
Venezuela's Chavez might want to help you, but will he be able to?
You better start building that fort near Waco. You're on your own.
No, just turn it over to one of the tribes and give whichever tribe 51% control of WMF. We do this stuff all the time with corporate investments. The trade off is you fall under the jurisdiction of tribal Courts. Since only tribal folks can bring causes of action in tribal court, the outside world (with the single exception of the US Attorney General) are barred from stirring up trouble.
This talk is just nonsense. WMF is in great shape. It they can muzzle me and put a harness and me and get me working to help them, they can fix anything.
Jeff
Jeffrey V. Merkey wrote:
Lars Aronsson wrote:
Michael R. Irwin wrote:
snip
This talk is just nonsense. WMF is in great shape. It they can muzzle me and put a harness and me and get me working to help them, they can fix anything.
Jeff
One of the Founders, Larry Sanger, seemed to agree with you that strategic planning was not an appropriate topic to waste contributers' time upon.
It is nice to run into an optimist once in while.
As a practical matter you might wish to consider that as an organization grows people generally expect its competence to grow as well.
regards, lazyquasar
Lars Aronsson wrote:
Michael R. Irwin wrote:
If this is a nonissue because duplicate dataset updates are routinely sent to various chapters that have agreed to serve as out of U.S. control zones backups
And what I'm telling you is that "out of U.S. control zones" are essentially North Korea, Syria, and Zimbabwe. If the U.S. govt were to close down the Wikimedia Foundation, then a backup in Sweden would not help you one bit. Libya will not help you, because Khadaffi is far to eager to improve relations to the western world. That is, in a fight between you and the U.S. Govt, Khadaffi would side with the later.
Venezuela's Chavez might want to help you, but will he be able to?
You better start building that fort near Waco. You're on your own.
What fort? I have been primarily talking about reliability, robustness, cutover load management.
Others seem paranoid we cannot find a way to reliably comply with U.S. law regarding copyright, slander, etc.
I agree in a "fight" with the U.S. government they can take down servers wordwide, by cruise missile or smart bomb if necessary. It merely seems a bit harder to come up with discrete excuses unnoticed by the public worldwide if the servers are distributed.
As I recall when Reagan bombed Libya's Kaddafi we (the U.S.) lost a B-1 at sea partially because France refused overflight rights during the attack.
How about Australia? U.S. Warships are not allowed port call priveleges there unless U.S.G. certifies it has no nuclear munitions on board.
More seriously I had not noticed that U.S. influence was so pervasive and reliable.
I think some distributed server installations would go a long way towards reducing capricious or questionable action from U.S. courts. Further I would think it would take some time for U.S. influence to shut down all other servers. Time that would allow proper appeals to U.S. Appellate Courts or even the Supreme Court while the material was still available from other servers.
We could call this the lightening bug strategy. One server goes down and another one lights up.
Anyway. It is not my problem at all. It is the WMF Board or Trustees responsibility to figure out what the WMF owes contributors and users worldwide.
I merely found the technical problem of guaranteeing world wide data access after an Altantic tsanami or Cat 6 hurricane washed over Florida a bit interesting.
regards, lazyquasar
Michael R. Irwin wrote:
If you want immunity against legal threats in the western world (and for what outlaw purpose would you want this?), you probably have to relocate to North Korea, Syria or Zimbabwe.
Personally I do not think we need or want immunity, nor do I think it is possible. In my view compliance is reasonable and required.
I do think making damn sure that the millions of manhours of donated effort spent developing the Wikimedia project data can not be partially or totally wasted by the simple expedient of purchasing all media and data rights of the WMF from a liquidation authority for a few thousand dollars and then filing nuisance lawsuits against anyone posting or publishing online the entire dataset from backups.
If you do not like the above scenario make up your own and consider how to defuse it.
The datasets the WMF supports online are just now getting to the point of potentially depressing sales of millions and then hundreds of millions and then billions of dollars of published materials in the U.S.A annually. The publishing industry in the U.S. is not going to roll over and modernize any easier than the record labels, Disney, U.S.Government; and the other DRM proponents did. They can buy access to the U.S. Congress just as easy as anyone else.
Nor is it unlikely that the U.S. government might like a return to more easily controlled media focal points. I do not know if you have noticed; but as official policy, both foreign and domestic, the U.S. now employs torture, has secret courts (an oxy moron), and has an executive branch which does not even meet its responsibility under federal law to tell a secret court within 3 days why it backdated the ability for secret police raids, searches, wiretaps, etc. This is a substantial departure from the typical U.S. citizen's mental image of the "land of the free".
Some people claim this is standard practice while at War while others claim this is a substantial departure from U.S. policy, laws, and expectations. The one thing that is clear is that the "War on Terror" is likely to be finished when the office of the U.S. president (POTUS) says it is finished. It is not prudent to be relying exclusively on the Constitution of the United States for the ability to publicly publish useful information potentially detrimental to large business or government interests in the U.S.
If this is a nonissue because duplicate dataset updates are routinely sent to various chapters that have agreed to serve as out of U.S. control zones backups and reestablish internet access within six months of WMF shutdown; then maybe someone can say so publicly and we can leave all risk management issues and elimination of single points of failure to the God King and his designated Trustees and staff.
BTW, is a completed audit on the WMF's first few years of operation posted somewhere online where interested parties such as myself can review it?
If it is not posted, but available upon request, then I would like to request copies or be placed upon the distribution list so I get copies when they become available.
later, lazyquasar _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Oh come on guys, WMF is not going to get swept away, and they do not enjoy "sovereign immunity" because they are
1. Not a State (11th Ammendment) 2. Not the United States Goverment (must have Waiver of Immunity) 3. Not an Indian Nation
They are a non-profit corp, which gives them all the rights of any citizen (since a corporation is a citizen).
They do GOOD THINGS, and they act in GOOD FAITH.
They are not going away (unless they want to), getting smashed, or being litigated into oblivion. If things really get that bad, they can co-locate their hosting on Indian Land somewhere under "Native American Language Preservation" and then they truly will have immunity from most causes of action if the program is run by one of the tribes with an English version of the site as an adjunct "add on" non-primary site.
Jeff
Jeffrey V. Merkey wrote:
snip
Oh come on guys, WMF is not going to get swept away, and they do not enjoy "sovereign immunity" because they are
- Not a State (11th Ammendment)
- Not the United States Goverment (must have Waiver of Immunity)
- Not an Indian Nation
I think we were talking about practical immunity from problems large enough to cause problems. Not sovereignty.
They are a non-profit corp, which gives them all the rights of any citizen (since a corporation is a citizen).
Right. Which means in case of judicial error the corporation is likely to be ordered to liquidate all assets if necessary to partially fullfull any penalties assessed by the court.
Ever hear of anyone bankrupted by an auto accident?
They do GOOD THINGS, and they act in GOOD FAITH.
So we assume. Errors are possible. Some potential errors might be costly and could be life threatening to the erring entity. Particularly if at times cash reserves are low.
They are not going away (unless they want to), getting smashed, or being litigated into oblivion. If things really get that bad, they can co-locate their hosting on Indian Land somewhere under "Native American Language Preservation" and then they truly will have immunity from most causes of action if the program is run by one of the tribes with an English version of the site as an adjunct "add on" non-primary site.
So are there Sovereign Indian Lands somewhere which directly border Canada or Mexico such that a data fiber link could be established between the international internet and the servers without crossing U.S. jurisdiction?
regards, lazyquazer
Michael R. Irwin wrote:
Jeffrey V. Merkey wrote:
They are a non-profit corp, which gives them all the rights of any citizen (since a corporation is a citizen).
Right. Which means in case of judicial error the corporation is likely to be ordered to liquidate all assets if necessary to partially fullfull any penalties assessed by the court.
Ever hear of anyone bankrupted by an auto accident?
A corporation is a person, not a citizen. Judicial error refers to an error in a judges ruling; I don't see what that has to do with anythin. An order to liquidate assets cannot be applied extraterritorially against owners who live in another country.
They are not going away (unless they want to), getting smashed, or being litigated into oblivion. If things really get that bad, they can co-locate their hosting on Indian Land somewhere under "Native American Language Preservation" and then they truly will have immunity from most causes of action if the program is run by one of the tribes with an English version of the site as an adjunct "add on" non-primary site.
So are there Sovereign Indian Lands somewhere which directly border Canada or Mexico such that a data fiber link could be established between the international internet and the servers without crossing U.S. jurisdiction?
The St. Regis Mohawk reserve straddles the Ontario-New York border. The government gets upset about their cigarette smuggling.
Michael R. Irwin wrote:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
mboverload wrote:
I'm just not comfortable with leasing period.
I find Wikipedia to be too important to leave in anyone's hands other than the immediate foundation. A company that leases servers may easily give in to legal challenges or other backhanded threats. We'd have to have legal advice about how this would effect the lawsuit situation and consider what we would be giving up.
Leasing does not necesarily mean going through an existing for-profit leasing company. Many of them would certainly give cause to your discomfort. A totally new company established for the purpose of leasing back the hardware would do just fine. Whatever contractual arrangements are made could reflect the values of the community and a break even business plan.
Considering the efforts that WMF is putting into operating correctly in full compliance with Florida and Federal U.S. law; I find it hard to believe that our potential legal liabilities are large enough to justify complicating our community/corporate structure.
I don't believe that the structure should be dumbed down just to satisfy the fears of people who don't understand corporate structures. One should not confuse full compliance with neglecting our legal rights.
To casual reviewers considering donation this type of thing could look like an attempt to siphon money out of the WMF or raise questions why we feel it is necessary.
Quite the contrary. Donors in other countries could see this as a legitimate way of keeping the funds within the country rather than jeopardizing tax exempt status by exporting funds.
Consider the absolute worst case, litigation goes against us and WMF is forced to liquidate all assets and cease operations.
The major asset of the project/program/community/foundation is the FDL'ed databases, GPL'ed software, and community of contributors, developers, and other volunteers.
These are not the kind of assets that will be recognized by a court making a valuation for the purpose of liquidating the liabilities from a court decision. Cash in the bank and the servers are marketable.
A new Foundation could be back up and operating at current levels within a quarter or two with an aggressive public funding drive for hardware.
If the legal risks are really so high, perhaps we should seek a partnership or understanding with a major university such as Oxford, or Yale, or _______ that in the event of legal catastrophe the site could be brought back up on their servers until the community had organized a new nonprofit to host its projects and acquired and setup new servers and bandwidth.
Perhaps the Electronic Frontiers Foundation or SourceForge would be interested in some kind of reciprocal agreement?
These outside organizations could be looked at, but we can't presume now how they will evolve between now and then. Ec
Anthere Anthere9@yahoo.com writes:
Resolution ombudsperson checkuser passed 23 July 2006 :creation of the committee in charge of investigating privacy policy
...
OTRS specific queue where such requests may be redirected etc...) Wegge, please, can you contact the two other members and see what needs to be done ?
Yes, I'll get in touch with the two other members shortly, and then we'll return with a wishlist.
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org