On Wed, Dec 29, 2010 at 4:55 PM, Ryan Lane rlane32@gmail.com wrote:
As someone who originally started contributing from maintaining a small MediaWiki instance, I kind of dislike this question. I also don't think we should be mixing "we" when discussing WMF and MediaWiki.
But to answer your question: yes. We get contributions, we get employees, and we get a larger, more vibrant community. A number of contributors come from enterprises and small shops, but they often don't contribute directly to Wikimedia projects. However, their contributions often allow other people to use the software in environments they couldn't be used in otherwise (LDAP authentication is a perfect example of this). The people who then get to use the software may turn into contributors that do benefit WMF.
QFT.
-Chad