On Dec 10, 2012 3:03 AM, "Milos Rancic" <[email protected]> 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 > [email protected] > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
