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

[Anthony]

On 5/20/07, Florence Devouard <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 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.
>
Umm, how so?  Check out eBay sometime, or half.com (have they gotten
rid of that yet?).  People resell DVDs using trademarks which they
aren't authorized to use for a commercial activity *all the time*.
Besides that, it's most certainly not 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.
>
Then you could sue me, and I'd countersue you for violating the GFDL.
What part of "add no other conditions whatsoever to those of this
License" don't you understand?

If you're currently forcing datafeed recipients to agree not to
redistribute the data they receive, then you're in major breach of the
GFDL.  Not just the relatively minor breaches that have been going on
for so long, but you've subverting the very essence of copyleft.

I seriously hope your current contracts don't do that.

> > 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.

The millions of dollars in donations you've collected is another way
to pay an accountant.

> 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.
>
The organization is going to be run regardless of whether or not the
datafeed is given.  Counting all the costs of running the organization
when calculating the marginal cost of providing a datafeed, is
seriously being out of it.

Anthony