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@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]] _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe