[Foundation-l] Honorarium (was Re: [Found>, > This conversation had jumped back and forth ....)

[Michael R. Irwin]

Gregory Maxwell wrote:

>On 8/12/06, Tim Starling <t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
>  
>
>>Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't these honoraria essentially Jimmy's only
>>means of income? I don't know if he draws a salary from Wikia, but I'm
>>fairly sure that the company is not yet turning a profit. He works almost
>>full-time publicising Wikimedia. It would seem very strange to me to deny
>>him this one small token of our appreciation.
>>    
>>
>
>Imagine for a moment a world where demand for official Wikimedia talks
>is so great that they fetch prices of upwards of $20,000 each.
>Wouldn't it make more sense to have such speakers on our payroll at
>that point? ;)
>
>In any case, so long as a speakers isn't using the foundation's
>trademarks, or otherwise deriving  revenue from directly from our
>collected goodwill then there isn't a darn thing we could do to stop
>them.  The question of "if the money should go to the foundation" in
>such cases is thus immaterial.
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>
>  
>
Perhaps it is immaterial to Jimbo or his selected Board members.   It 
surely is not immaterial to anyone who might choose to stand for 
election or re-election for a future term in one of the limited Board 
memberships subjected to selection by the unwashed masses.

It would be very helpful to have clear useful policy in place as soon as 
possible such that a person standing for election can coherently defend 
his past actions to potential voters.

regards,
lazyquasar