On Fri, Mar 15, 2013 at 2:51 AM, Erik Moeller <[email protected]> wrote: > On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 5:42 PM, Thomas Dalton <[email protected]> > wrote: > >> Last year's financial report shows almost exactly $2.5m for "Internet >> hosting". I'm not sure quite what that covers > > Only data-center usage (facilities, bandwidth, power). It does not > include capital expenditures (servers, storage, network gear, etc.; > budgeted at $1.9M in 2012-13) nor ops engineering staffing, nor of > course any software engineering staffing or the basics of an > organizational support structure (management/administration, legal, > etc.). > > What's a bare minimum amount? It's a hard question to answer, because > it depends on what you consider an acceptable bare minimum. > > - Is it acceptable for the projects to be without legal defense? > - Is it acceptable to revert back to a single data center mode of operation? > - Is it acceptable for ops to just barely be able to keep the lights > on, with minimal effort dedicated to backups/monitoring/maintenance, > etc.? > - Is it acceptable for there to be no software engineers to aid with > reviewing code contributions, and making improvements to the software? > and so on. > > WMF has operated in the past without staffing and with very minimal > staffing, so clearly it's _possible_ to host a high traffic website on > an absolute shoestring. But I would argue that an endowment, to > actually be worthwhile, should aim for a significantly higher base > level of minimal annual operating expenses, more in the order of > magnitude of $10M+/year, to ensure not only bare survival, but actual > sustainability of Wikimedia's mission. The "what's the level required > for bare survival" question is, IMO, only of marginal interest, > because it is much more desirable, and should be very much possible, > to raise funds for sustaining our mission in perpetuity.
I like the fact that megalomania is infectious and escalating disease, which has roots in reality :) I started to write something like: Come on, it's better to have a bare minimum than nothing. Then I realized that WMF endowment needs two year of Mozilla's income. Thus, quite possible for WMF, as well. Not in two, but yes in five or so years. _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
