[Foundation-l] Re: what is partnership ?

[Anthere]

Ray Saintonge a écrit:
> Neil Harris wrote:
> 
>> Christopher Mahan wrote:
>>
>>> --- Neil Harris 

>> I agree with you on this. Partner recognition should be kept well 
>> clear of the content. Which is why I recommend having partnership info 
>> on the Wikimedia Foundation site, not in the project content.
> 
> 
> There are some very important points here in the matter of intellectual 
> property law.  I have long believed that in terms of copyrights the big 
> argument will not come over the inclusion of copyvio material in some 
> Wikipedia article, but over the willingness of Wikimedia to defend the 
> collective rights of its multitude of licensors.  The collective has a 
> history of removing copyvio material when it is found, often to an 
> extent that far exceeds what may be required by law.  We only need to be 
> aware of the copyvio material before we act.
> 
> So far, I believe that those who have used the Wikipedia material have 
> been reasonably willing to be compliant when advised of the GFDL.  What 
> happens if someone bluntly and stubbornly refuses?  What tools do we 
> have that we are willing to use to enforce compliance?  Who has the 
> personal responsibility to take the necessary legal steps?  Prosecuting 
> cases can be more difficult than defending them.  The fact that our 
> collective rights are primarily not fiscal ones makes protecting them 
> more difficult in a judicial system that reduces all disputes to dollar 
> values as the lowest common denominator.  A lawyer working on 
> contingency fees knows how to calculate 30% of nothing.
> 
> I remember well the first "24" who was chased away when I arrived three 
> years ago.  (He should not be confused with the more recent and now more 
> familiar one who really was a PIA.)  Anyways, the first 24 was concerned 
> with a set of ideas in economic theory based on different kinds of 
> capital.  He considered such things as social capital, educational 
> capital and environmental capital, all of which should appear on some 
> kind of balance sheet.  IIRC he was mostly criticized for presenting 
> original research, but some of which I had heard already heard about in 
> other sources.  The point in raising this is that we need to look at 
> capital in other than monetary terms, because that may be the one common 
> idea that underpins all movements for the free distribution of knowledge.
> In the matter of partnerships being big has certain advantages; it 
> allows us to be in the driver's seat.  We can, for example, charge a fee 
> for the right to call oneself a Wikipedia partner while doing very 
> little else in return.  A single page which shows the logos of all our 
> partners would be enough.  That would only be there as verification that 
> someone that calls himself a partner really is.
> 
> Picture this:  We have, by volunteer effort alone, created a 
> half-billion dollar gorilla that can't be sold (though not for a lack of 
> willing buyers).  Its physical assets are a tiny depreciating server 
> farm, and a little pocket change in the bank.  Enron could only wish to 
> have done so much with so little?  That's the ultimate futures trade by 
> the libertarian capitalist king of a socialist monarchy.
> Ec

Nod.

And again, partnership should be an exchange. "Selling" our logo (ie, 
exchanging monetary resources in exchange of the use of a name, a 
logo...) is only one way to do partnership.

There are other ways to do so. For example, when a website or an 
organisation offers us some of its content, it is sharing knowledge with 
us. It has value. It is "instructional capital". When Telebotanica 
offers us to work together (ie, we together work to build a common 
resource), it is "human capital". When some one offers us a server, it 
is "infrastructural capital". When Sunir Shah made suggestions earlier 
in Wikipedia life, it was "individual capital". Etc... All these are 
partnerships. We just do not consider them so, because when we think 
partnership, we think "asking money for the other one to use our logo" 
or "exchaning links to increase google rank".

Our perspective is not modest. We now usually approach partnership with 
a superior opinion. As a financial and bureaucratic thing.

When it is just about saying "We are collaborating on something. We have 
a relationship of some sort".


We were more modest 3 years ago.