Brianna Laugher wrote:
On 05/11/06, Brion Vibber brion@pobox.com wrote:
All content is hosted in and ultimately served from the United States.
</not a lawyer and cannot speak to legal issues>
OK, my previous statement was possibly incorrect, then. But out of interest, was there a formal decision to only have content-hosting machines in the US? Or is it only a fact of convenience (since I think that's where all the main devs are located)?
Physical location of software developers is highly irrelevant; I'm usually in the US but nobody else is. :)
Our current main hosting center was I think chosen mainly because it was convenient to where Jimmy relocated himself and his company a few years ago, and Wikipedia went along for the ride.
Choosing someplace outside the US wouldn't have made much sense for a US company...
Could content-hosting machines one day be hosted in Europe? (seems the most likely next location)
Hypothetically content-hosting machines could one day be located anywhere. In reality this depends on a number of factors, chiefly:
* Practicality
It's far, far, far, far, far, far easier and more reliable to keep things centralized, hence our abandonment of the limited experiment with a second content cluster.
On this basis alone it's unlikely we'll add content-bearing servers in new locations in the forseeable future. (And if it does happen, they'll need more hands-on operations.)
* Legal
Operating in another jurisdiction may have legal ramifications, the details of which may or may not be acceptable.
At the least, adding more jurisdictions will add to uncertainty. I can't speak for the foundation about what would be considered acceptable or likely conditions.
Apparently the Korea experiment was considered acceptable on this basis, but I never really got a clear view from WMF on this issue.
IANAL IANAL IANAL IANAL
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)