Mark Williamson wrote:
I somehow doubt that Google, a publicly-traded company with very secretive management, wants to do this because they feel it's their duty.
It's good publicity, and if that helps get people to use their search engine and other services they make money from extra ad hits on their search engine and other services. Not exactly rocket science here, folks.
What worries me is that the final say rests with a small-but-trusted group of individuals, not with the community. This is the trouble of our switch from a complete democracy to a not-so-representative democracy (only two of the board members were elected) - we have to trust that these people will be gentle with our future.
Prior to the board elections, there were *ZERO* community-elected people with direct, legal say in the actual operation of the project. None at all. Now there are two. Two is more than zero, not less.
Perhaps you don't remember, but before there was a legally incorporated, not-for-profit Wikimedia Foundation, Wikipedia and related projects were in fact a side project operated purely at the whim of Jimmy Wales and his for-profit company, Bomis, Inc.
Are you a shareholder in Bomis, Mark? I know I'm not. We didn't have "complete democracy" in any imaginable way; all we had was the fact that Jimmy is a nice guy and Bomis was never taken over by evil people in the meantime who might have decided that Bomis' resources would be better spent in a different way.
Wikimedia's charter tasks it with maintaining a free encyclopedia, and presently two-fifths of its board of directors is elected from the user community. That's a much greater reassurance, and much closer to "democracy", than relying solely on the whim of one nice guy with no legal responsibility to keep the project going in the way 'we' like.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)