[Foundation-l] Wikia leasing office space to WMF

[Aryeh Gregor]

On Fri, Jan 23, 2009 at 3:31 PM, Gregory Kohs <thekohser at gmail.com> wrote:
> It would appear that nobody is concerned about giving the landlord a
> leg up on ITS for-profit competitors by supplying them in particular
> with a ready feed of intellectual capital in the form of the friendly
> Stanton-funded developers?

All the changes are going to be open-source, and the development
process will be open.  I can't see why you would object to Wikimedia
collaborating with one of the largest end-users of MediaWiki on
improving the software.

I can't see what the claimed conflict of interest is, either.  Did
anyone involved in the decision, from Wikimedia's side, have any
connections to Wikia?  So far both Brion Vibber and Ting Chen have
said that it was the best offer, and neither of them is or ever has
been affiliated with Wikia in any way to my knowledge.

If there's no conflict of interest, then what grounds are there for
suggesting any wrongdoing?  If the deal is good for Wikia, why should
Wikimedia care one way or the other, if it was the best offer from
their perspective?  So good for Wikia, they offered the best terms and
might get better access because of it.