Hello Sohom, I'm Just jumping in here real quick on this specific section of your wider email. I cannot speak to the other questions you've asked so I will leave those to other people. But I wanted to just cover the separate, but specific points, that you mentioned about the *Enterprise *APIs as soon as possible:
...I feel very strongly that community members who are contributing in
mission-aligned ways should not be asked to shift to use a closed-source, monetary contributions-gated, out-of-date version of our own data that they have spent hours curating.
Although they are *primarily intended *for, and designed for the purposes of, high-volume commercial organisations, the API suite IS open source, like all WMF software. Also, it is not gated for only people who pay - accessible to *anyone *(including for commercial purposes) via its own website - at no cost. The payment comes with higher volume usage requirements and/or SLA contractual guarantees. Furthermore, there are alternative access methods *especially *for wikimedians, notably via WMCloudServicies. If none of that works for you there is also a published criteria method for requesting exceptional access to the higher speed/volume for - exactly as you mentioned - mission-aligned reasons. These access methods are documented here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Enterprise#Access
If we ever end up in a scenario where a contributor feels compelled to pay
for a Wikimedia Enterprise account, we have done something seriously wrong.
I'll also link to the operating principles of the project here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Enterprise/Principles which, among things I've already mentioned, include a specific element which addresses, and guards against, that concern.
You can read the FAQ with sections about finance, tech, legal, and strategy/mission alignment here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Enterprise/FAQ If you have any further questions about that API suite - please come over to the talkpage on Meta wiki.
I do not wish to distract the mailing list from the larger points being made in the discussion on this thread - just to clarify these specific side issues. Sincerely,
*Liam Wyatt *(wittylama) [UTC 0/+1]
Senior Manager of Technology Partnerships
Wikimedia Foundation +44 7429 223 063 / lwyatt@wikimedia.org
Regards,
Sohom Datta
Open-source contributor @Wikimedia