[Foundation-l] Fundraising banner ad

[SJ Klein]

On Mon, 22 Oct 2007, Delirium wrote:

> I've been here for nearly 5 years and *I'm* not even sold on that, so I
> could see why not everyone else is either. The servers at
> *.wikipedia.org are not going to shut down if the fundraiser comes short
> of funds, so "sustain itself" is not quite the right word. Furthermore,
> if we were anywhere near having to shut down due to lack of funds to pay
> bandwidth bills, there are plenty of folks standing by ready to make
> major in-kind donations; Jimmy himself mentioned on this mailing list
> that he's had conversations with Google where they've told him they're
> ready to offer anytime we feel like asking.

I'm not sure that Wikipedia has this kind of safety net yet.  However, it 
is something to aspire to; there have been discussions about setting up a 
trust or endowment specifically to safeguard the running and maintenance 
of servers, independent of other operational costs.  This is something 
valuable that I hope takes shape now that we aren't fighting fires every 
other month.

SJ