[Foundation-l] 2010-11 Annual Plan Now Posted to FoundationWebsite

[Thomas Dalton]

On 3 July 2010 18:29, Keegan Peterzell <keegan.wiki at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hm, well, I think this gets back to David Goodman's point, one which I agree
> with.
>
> Yes, the only absolute commitment the WMF has in the grand scheme of things
> is to provide the physical resource to host the projects.  However, this all
> began as a  side project on Bomis servers.  If it had gone belly up before
> the Foundation was established, volunteers would have forked the content and
> found other hosting providers, not just tossed in the towel.  I think it is
> fair to say that volunteers would still do this- locate and finance the
> resources independently.  It would cause splintering, because of anticipated
> control issues,and all that comes with forks and the prongs each being
> pointy.
>
> I guess my point is that ultimately I would rather see the WMF focus on
> using its resources to provide free educational materials as actively as
> possible and disseminating them as far as possible rather than build a war
> chest.  If the shit were to hit the fan, volunteers would still step up.

When Bomis was hosting it, it was just a handful of servers.
Volunteers wouldn't be able to fork the site and keep things going at
anywhere near the level they are at now - if the WMF doesn't have the
funds, neither will the community. You can't host a top 5 website on a
server in your spare room.