[Foundation-l] Erik's New Job

[Lars Aronsson]

Chad wrote:

> It just screams that they were planning it,

Yes, we really hate people who plan ahead.  When staff and board 
members wake up in the morning, they should ask the mailing list 
which way to comb their hair.  Nothing must be planned behind our 
backs.  It's a conspiracy!

Meanwhile, Brion orders dozens of new servers without asking this 
list what kind of RAM they should have.  The servers keep running.

The worst of all is that Erik's new position totally ruins my idea 
for a conspiracy novel.  Here's what I had in mind (not that I 
plan things ahead):

Google is worried that Wikimedia Foundation's goodness is 
overshining their own role as the don't-be-evil empire.  They 
launch Knol, but it only becomes half successful.  At their big 
10th anniversary party (they started in 1998 so this should come 
up soon) they politely invite the Wikimedia Foundation, being 
newcomers in the Bay Area.  But they have a plan: They succeed to 
lure Erik over to their side, and hire him to run Knol.

The next decade (300 pages or so) is a fierce fight between being 
good and being not evil.  The old fight between free software and 
open source software is almost forgotten.  Meanwhile, Erik 
combines Knol with Omegawiki, and this turns out to be so 
successful that in fact Knol becomes his tool to take over Google, 
rather than Erik and Knol being Google's tools for taking over 
Wikipedia.  It is a fight between Erik (Möller) and Eric 
(Schmidt), where bit by bit, Erik turns Google's assets over to 
free licenses.  When Larry and Sergey discover this, it's too 
late.  Erik declares his right-to-fork and moves Google's cash 
resources over to the Wikimedia Foundation.  Like a white knight 
he returns with golden treasures after having slayed the dragon.


-- 
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se