[Wikimedia-l] FreeBSD fate and the lesson for Wikimedia movement

[Martijn Hoekstra]

On Dec 10, 2012 3:03 AM, "Milos Rancic" <millosh at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> The news from today is that FreeBSD didn't succeed to gather enough
> money during their annual fundraising [1][2].
>
> Badass suggestion would be that they should ask now Apple for funds.
> But, I'll try to keep chortle for myself and remain serious for the
> rest of this email.
>
> First of all, FreeBSD is a part of our broader movement and Wikimedia
> Foundation and Wikimedia chapters should find a way how to help them.
> I suppose that Mozilla Foundation could be also interested in this
> venture. Thus, I'd ask WMF and relevant chapters (those who have
> money) to organize themselves, contact Mozilla and see how to help
> FreeBSD community. I know that it's not a straight-forward action, but
> it's manageable.

I don't think our donors would like it if we gave their money to FreeBSD.

> If necessary, you can send email to me and I'll connect all interested
> Wikimedia [and surrounding] organizations. (And, please, don't ask me
> "Why should we help them?".)
>
> Second, and more important for ourselves: this is very strong message
> to us. Obviously, that's not because our content isn't licensed under
> a copyleft license.
>
> While I could appreciate FreeBSD folk's ethical position that free
> content should be free without any limit; while I could tolerate their
> flirt with proprietary software vendors; it proved that their strategy
> is bad for themselves. In short, they rely on their usefulness without
> having any defense.
>
> The question of [the type of] content license was the question of
> 1990s and early 2000s. Wikipedia solved that issue at the very
> beginning of its existence.
>
> But, strategic flaws are not limited on choosing the license. There
> are many of them and every new epoch brings their own possibilities to
> make them.
>
> I can see that we are in similar position now as FreeBSD was during
> the late 1990s. Good news is that it's likely that we have ~15 more
> years to change things. Bad news is that we are already at least five
> years behind our competition.
>
> And our competition are not various online encyclopedias -- not one as
> large and as relevant as Wikipedia. Our competition are top Internet
> sites, which are taking away the attention of our users.
>
> Fortunately, no top Internet site has enough of imagination to create
> viable collaborative educational project of Wikipedia size. (BTW, they
> have courage to do that -- Google Knol was the best try. Fortunately.)
> Fortunately, we don't have serious competitor outside of our broader
> movement (we don't have it inside, neither, but that wouldn't be so
> bad news; actually, bad news is that we don't have internal competitor
> yet).

Why is this fortunate?

>
> Unfortunately, although existing, our steps toward making Wikimedia
> projects more attractive to new generations are so small, that it's
> hard to see them.
>
> I am happy to see that we finally got two new projects: Wikidata and
> Wikivoyage. That's, for sure, the step in the right direction and the
> first fresh blood after six years.
>
> However, our fate won't be much different from FreeBSD's if our main
> strategies are to repeat the pattern (Wikivoyage) or to do some really
> cool things for very limited population (including myself, of course;
> I am really excited with Wikidata).
>
> Our strategy should be contemporary. And, yes, that means social
> networking and gaming features. And, no, they don't have to be dumb.
>

Possibly a good idea, but how does this relate to FreeBSD being behind on
their fundraiser goal?

> [1]
http://news.slashdot.org/story/12/12/09/1726222/freebsd-project-falls-short-of-year-end-funding-target-by-nearly-50
> [2] http://www.freebsdfoundation.org/donate/
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikimedia-l mailing list
> Wikimedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l