[Foundation-l] [announcement] new staff member in business development

[Florence Devouard]

Anthony wrote:
> On 5/19/07, Yann Forget <yann at forget-me.net> wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> Anthony a écrit :
>> (...)
>>> But I think the main issue has nothing to do with the IRS.  It's a
>>> matter of focus.  Developing a profitable business competes with the
>>> maximum production and distribution of content.  Charging maximum
>>> prices for data feeds reduces the dissemination of the data.  Charging
>>> licensing fees to DVD distributors raises the prices of the DVDs and
>>> thus reduces the number of DVDs which are distributed.  Etc, etc (*).
>> I think this is false, because we deal with digital and free content.
>>
>> It is not because you sell a datafeed to one organisation at one prize
>> that you sell it to everybody at the same price. Same logic for DVDs.
>>
> Interesting.  I don't think that would be feasible for datafeeds
> though, and I'm pretty sure it isn't feasible for DVDs.  In the case
> of DVDs, if you tried to sell them to different groups for different
> prices, you'd simply see people resell the DVDs (engage in arbitrage).

Reselling one or two DVD would not be a big deal.
However, engaging into a real reselling activity of a DVD using 
trademarks which you are not authorized to use for a commercial 
activity, is illegal.



>  I think this would happen for datafeeds as well, if they were ever
> accessible to the regular public.  If I as an individual could buy an
> en.wikipedia datafeed for $100/month (which would probably be more
> than enough to cover WMF's actual costs), the WMF wouldn't be able to
> charge companies $5000/month, because if they did I'd just step in and
> resell my $100/month datafeed for much less than $5000.

Yeah, and since your contract agreement at $100 explicitely does not 
allow you to resell the feed to a third party, you would engage into 
illegal activity as well.



> And I think the WMF *should* be willing to sell unrestricted datafeeds
> to *anyone* for little more than its actual costs.  This is in line
> with maximizing the useful distribution of free content, which is
> after all the purpose of the WMF.

Datafeed is one of the way we can make money. Which will allow us to pay 
the accountant.
Which will allow us to provide all the financial information you are 
noisily requesting.
If you count in "actual cost" uniquely the bandwidth cost, $100 could 
make it. But running an organization uniquely counting as cost, the 
bandwidth, is seriously being out of it.

ant

> Anthony