[Foundation-l] Thinking for the Future

[Anthony]

On Wed, Mar 26, 2008 at 10:26 PM, Brian <Brian.Mingus at colorado.edu> wrote:
> I'm not sure that we are anti-Microsoft.

Personally, I'm not at all anti-Microsoft.  In fact, about a week ago
I was a bona-fide Microsoft shareholder (sold to pay off some bills).

But I thought their name was invariably brought up whenever allowing
advertisements is discussed.

> The Foundation has been open to accepting funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Accepting funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is quite
different from providing funding for Microsoft, though. But on that
front, I remember the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation specifically
being brought up as an example of an organization we shouldn't
support, during the uproar over Virgin Unite.

I dunno, I think it'd be controversial, and I'm not sure just telling
the advisors not to invest in certain companies would eliminate the
controversy.  In fact, doing so would probably just increase the
controversy, in deciding which companies to include in such a list.

Of course, I suppose that's a problem that's more easily solved once
the money is in place.  After all, if a benefactor wants to donate
$100 million for an endowment, s/he'd most likely have the most say in
what types of restrictions, if any, would be put on the investments.
Not that $100 million would be anywhere near enough to sustain the
WMF.  It would probably be enough to sustain wikipedia.org for a long
time (barring a total financial collapse in the invested markets), but
at the point where the WMF is staring at $100 million I hope its sites
would be set on loftier goals than just distributing an encyclopedia
over the Internet.