Erik Moeller, 21/03/2014 08:37:
On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 11:55 PM, Fæ wrote:
Eric, in this thread you are officially speaking for the WMF. Does the WMF really want to say it is "ethical" to have different accountability rules for funding organizations that want to use the Wikimedia brand because there are different rules for the rich?
No, that's not the point. The point is that a grant given to us goes through a different process than, say, a grant from us to WMFR, and that necessarily leads to different practices -- the grant-giver has their own expectations on how to do accounting, reporting, etc.
True. But I'd go further: the problem here is not that WMF has not been "ethical" enough, rather that it wasn't smart enough to properly wash its hands of a possibly (possibly) "unethical" affair. From the looks of it, this is just the boring story of a rather standard academical trick: A and B are connected and want to hire C; X is introduced as middle man, receives money from A and opportunity from B, blindly transfers them (and nothing more, or something less) to C; formally nobody has any responsibility or knowledge of what's going on and magically everyone is happy. However, X either earns something or doesn't want any responsibility on the choice of C, taking only care of the financial part as a mere clearing account (if that's the term in English)/gift. The responsibility is put on either A or B, usually the one who benefits more from the operation.
Nemo