Hi Erik, I'd say 'maybe'. I think this sort of work is worth supporting in general, but the question should be whether providing the support would improve the content and/or provision of the Wikimedia projects. I'd like to see a good community-driven process that would determine whether such sponsorship would be helpful or whether it would be a waste of money.
Thanks, Mike On 15 Apr 2014, at 20:50, Erik Moeller <e...@wikimedia.org> wrote: > Hi folks, > > I'd be interested in hearing broader community opinions about the > extent to which WMF should sponsor non-profits purely to support work > that Wikimedia benefits from, even if it's not directed towards a > specific goal established in a grant agreement. > > This comes up from time to time. One of the few historic precedents > I'm aware of is the $5,000 donation that WMF made to FreeNode in 2006 > [1]. But there are of course many other organizations/communities that > the Wikimedia movement is indebted to. > > On the software side, we have Ubuntu Linux (itself highly indebted to > Debian) / Apache / MariaDB / PHP / Varnish / ElasticSearch / memcached > / Puppet / OpenStack / various libraries and many other dependencies [2], > infrastructure tools like ganglia, observium, icinga, etc. Some of > these projects have nonprofits that accept and seek sponsorship and > support, some don't. > > One could easily expand well beyond the software we depend on > server-side to client-side open source applications used by our > community to create content: stuff like Inkscape, GIMP and LibreOffice > (used for diagrams). And there are other communities we depend on, > like OpenStreetMap. > > So, should we steer clear of this type of sponsorship altogether > because it's a slippery slope, or should we try to come up with > evaluation criteria to consider it on a case-by-case basis (e.g. is > there a trustworthy non-profit that has a track record of > accomplishment and is in actual need of financial support)? > > I could imagine a process with a fixed "giving back" annual budget > and a community nominations/review workflow. It'd be work to create > and I don't want to commit to that yet, but I would be interested to > hear opinions. > > MariaDB specifically invited WMF to become a sponsor, and we're > clearly highly dependent on them. But I don't think it makes sense for > us to just write checks if there's someone who asks for support and > there's a justifiable need. However, if there's broad agreement that > this is something Wikimedia should do more of, then I think it's worth > developing more consistent sponsorship criteria. > > Thanks, > Erik > > > [1] https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Freenode_Donation > [2] Cf. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Upstream_projects > -- > Erik Möller > VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation > > _______________________________________________ > Wikimedia-l mailing list > Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, > <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe> _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
