Our exponentially increasing costs (was Re: [Foundation-l] Re: Answers.com and Wikimedia Foundation to Form New Partnership)

[Dan Grey]

I'll just say that the one worry with any form of partnerships,
sponsorships etc I have is that they could lead to people thinking
"well, I don't need to donate any more because they've got all this
stuff coming in". I swear I remember people who knew about the Yahoo
servers not donating for just that during the last find drive.

The big Yahoo and Kennisnet hardware donations were obviously more
than worth it, as they serve a large and increasing proportion of our
traffic. But if we start getting lots of other, smaller, income
streams, it could threaten our big one (donations in fund drives).
Maybe Google's arm should be twisted to actually come up with
something solid after their announcement earlier this year (which
undoubtedly did their PR the world of good - some people still think
they actually donated something!) - I'm sure they could spare a few
dozen servers somewhere...

I'm not saying I know what I'd do if I were Jimmy or a board member,
just pointing out potential risks :-).


Dan