Thanks for raising this Pete. I am interested in both the ethics and
practicalities of this change, as a long established unpaid volunteer
API user.
Sorry to raise the obvious, but while Geshuri is on the board, someone
found in court to have acted *illegally* on behalf of Google resulting
in damages of nearly half a billion dollars, yet still voted in
unanimously by the rest of the trustees as a jolly good chap (and
praised by Lila due to his worthiness), the idea of the board
discussing fundamental ethical changes that /may benefit Google/ to
the potential disadvantage of volunteers or charitable organisations
who will then no doubt be excluded from using a "1st class API,
reserved for rich global corporations" is abhorrent.
Let's wait and see if the community needs to play a game of
brinkmanship with a formal vote of no confidence in the WMF board of
trustees, before the current Chairman is seen to raise his hands and
admit there is a problem, or do anything about the WMF board's
blatantly broken or incompetently managed system of governance (it's 9
days now since my open letter, but there has yet to be a polite
acknowledgement of receipt from the Chair). If we end up forcing major
changes to the board through a form of democratic commercial
embarrassment, then this decision need to wait until there are
trustees in place that *we* have confidence in again, not just the
majority of current trustees.
Fae
On 16 January 2016 at 09:23, Pete Forsyth <peteforsyth(a)gmail.com> wrote:
I'm interested to hear some perspectives on the
following line of thinking:
Lisa presented some alternative strategies for revenue needs for the
Foundation, including the possibility of charging for premium access to the
services and APIs, expanding major donor and foundation fundraising,
providing specific services for a fee, or limiting the Wikimedia
Foundation's growth. The Board emphasized the importance of keeping free
access to the existing APIs and services, keeping operational growth in
line with the organization's effectiveness, providing room for innovation
in the Foundation's activities, and other potential fundraising strategies.
The Board asked Lila to analyze and develop some of these potential
strategies for further discussion at a Board meeting in 2016.
Source:
https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Minutes/2015-11-07
-Pete[[User:Peteforsyth]]
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