On Wed, Dec 29, 2010 at 4:55 PM, Ryan Lane <rlane32(a)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