I think that this leaves all of us who request WMF grants in difficult positions, because either we get along with WMF or we risk WMF cutting off our funding, and there are few non-WMF alternatives for funding Wikimedia work.
Even if someone finds a non-WMF alternative for funding Wikimedia work, that person or organization will often need WMF's approval to use the trademarks. I wonder if a solution to this is to make a 180 degree change to how spending approvals and trademark approvals are done, with the idea that WMF should come to the community to request approval for funding and to use the trademarks. In the meantime I personally feel like I need to choose between being honest and wanting funding. I'm not sure that the loss of my voice in discussions matters very much when there are tens of thousands of contributors, so maybe I overestimate the usefulness of my independence from WMF, but it seems to me that no one should be in this difficult position of feeling like they have a choice between (1) being honest or (2) wanting WMF grant funding and trademark approvals. To be clear, no one has threatened my funding with political conditions, but in the absence of some explicit and legally enforceable protections, I feel vulnerable. Pine ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine ) _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
