[Foundation-l] Accepting airline miles as donations

[Florence Devouard]

Dan Rosenthal wrote:
>> Do we want WMF to be the "Red Cross for information"? Or just the
>> glorified web-host? It seems to me the community has implicitly
>> accepted the Red Cross route, because the Foundation has massively
>> expanded and professionalised (not to mention moved across the
>> country) without uproarious complaint. The glorified web-host wouldn't
>> need to do these things.
> 
> Shouldn't the WMF figure out what it is supposed to be, rather than  
> us? If the foundation is going to be some sort of "red cross for  
> information" then it should be making the same advocacy efforts that  
> the Red Cross does, like making reports on the freedom of information  
> in countries (similar to the red crosses reports on health standards),  
> criticize countries that censor information (the same way the red  
> cross criticizes that violate human rights of their citizens) and such.

This is actually a very good idea. And I am totally sure it will happen 
more and more often, through WMF or through the chapters.

We have not produced such documents, because of lack of resources (noone 
to write them), but chapters are currently working to challenge the 
recent EC proposal of extension of authors rights. We also signed 
various agreements and statements in the past. Latest one is 
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Cape_Town_Open_Education_Declaration 
which I signed in the name of the Foundation.

I would support quite largely us pushing advocacy a little bit more than 
what we have been doing in the past... WITHOUT directly getting involved 
in criticizing a country or a political organization. That certainly 
would not be very wise and is simply not what we are trying to do.

However, giving clearly our position with regards to extension of 
authors rights in certain countries totally seem within our mission.

Ant

Ant