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[Waerth]

> Yup.
> Let us be realistic a moment here Waerth.
>
> Very few volunteers are willing to write grants themselves. It is tough 
> work. It takes time. It is better to be a professional in that area if 
> you want your grant to be accepted. It is just not something you do on 
> sunday morning between 8 am and 9 am.
>
> So, the WMF intends to hire a couple of professionals to precisely take 
> care of such things. Help writing grants. Help organizing fundraising. 
> Help do a little bit of business to collect funds. Hiring means "need 
> money". Hence the current fundraising.
>
> Currently, the WMF is not applying for ANY grant (no, there is no half 
> and half) because we do not have the human resources to do so.
>
> If you are interested in a job, please apply: 
> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Job_openings
>
> If you are interested in applying grants for free (entirely writing it, 
> not merely giving an idea of what would really be cool to do), please 
> contact us with a completed proposition.
>
> Thanks
>
> Ant
So the foundation is serious about it. That is very cool with me. About 
the jobs .... I wouldn't qualify
for any of them, also although moving to San Francisco sounds fine with 
me (home is everywhere on
the planet for me) I currently lack the resources to pull that off, I 
had trouble paying for the hopital bill
this week for the little person that got born, he and a certain lady 
friend of mine need me here now.
Although according to my lady friend she could take care of everything 
alone.

About writing grants voluntarily. I volunteered once 2 or 3 years ago, 
to help Danny. It never got of
the ground. The holy fire I once had for the foundation and its issues 
has kinda been put out in the last
year and a half it is just a fire. But I cannot sit up for nights 
anymore, I do not buy books anymore to
help spread knowledge by writing articles, I stopped writing altogether, 
I just make some corrections every
now and then that I see mistakes, I simply lost the passion.

Don't get me wrong. I still support the mission and everything and hope 
the foundation can and will succeed.
But to be able to help you need a drive and a passion. Something people 
like you, Sabine, Erik, Angela,
Jimbo, Jan-Bart and all the others whose names I am now forgetting have. 
And I hope that flame in all
of you will keep on burning. Without it I don't see who could lead the 
foundation (sorry if I insult someone here).
If there are small things I could help with, I will always look if I can 
help.

At the moment I am also busy building my own site and I need to spend 
all of my energy in that to make it work.
Wikimedia projects are part of the inspiration. Maybe while building my 
site the flame will rekindle and I will
help on a foundation level with some things.

I understand this is a lousy apologetic letter from my side and that you 
are disappointed that people only speak
from the sideline. I will make up for it in the future.

You boys and girls are all the greatest though! Please keep your fires 
burning ...... and keep leading this movement.
Anthere you are doing a great job!

Waerth