*Hi everyone, *
* *
*I’m simply thrilled to welcome Luis Villa to the Foundation as our new
Deputy General Counsel.*
*
Thanks to Kat Walsh, I met Luis during my first months at the Foundation.
Kat loves Luis, and it is no wonder why. In addition to being a superb
lawyer, Luis is an open source developer, has worked with leaders in our
Internet legal circles, and has a great personality that embraces our
culture.*
*
His most recent adventure took place at the Palo Alto office of Greenberg
Traurig, one of the top global law firms. There he worked with well-known
Internet lawyers like Ian Ballon and Heather Meeker. Luis focused on
technology transactions, helping clients create solutions to licensing
problems, with a particular emphasis on open source and software standards.
His clients included Mozilla, the Open Compute Project, and a variety of
clients large and small. Luis successfully defended Google in the
Oracle-Google/Android lawsuit, primarily working on the question of API
copyrightability. I hired Luis as outside counsel to work on a tough legal
matter for us, and his answers were on point, clear, and practical. *
*
Luis’ first contact with free software came was when he was in college at
Duke University. There he studied political science and computer science,
began using Linux, and helped triage Mozilla's bugzilla. A professor paid
him to play with Lego, resulting in brief maintainership of the GPL’d LegOS
operating system and co-authorship of the book "Extreme Mindstorms". *
*
After graduation, Luis worked at Ximian, a Linux desktop startup, doing
quality assurance and eventually managing the desktop team. As part of
that, he got heavily involved in the GNOME desktop project, becoming
bugmaster and then getting elected to the board of directors. After Ximian
was acquired, Luis became "geek in residence" at Harvard Law School's
Berkman Center. At Berkman, he translated from lawyer to geek, and managed,
maintained, and developed several software projects.*
*
After Berkman, Luis started his legal ventures in life at Columbia Law
School, where he was Editor in Chief of the Science and Technology Law
Review, was awarded honors each year, and was co-recipient of the class
prize for excellence in intellectual property scholarship. His thesis dealt
with the use of software standards as part of antitrust enforcement.
Outside of class, he participated in the GPL revision process, worked in
the General Counsel's office at Red Hat, and developed a surprisingly
strong attachment to New York City.*
*
After law school, Luis worked in the legal department at Mozilla, where his
major project was revising the Mozilla Public License. The license got over
a thousand words shorter, and gained stronger patent protections and
compatibility with the Apache and GPL licenses. Luis also worked on
privacy, contracts, standards bodies, and other issues.*
*
Outside of work, Luis is an invited expert to the World Wide Web
Consortium's Patents and Standards Interest Group, and a board member and
chair of the Licensing Committee at the Open Source Initiative. He also
enjoys biking, photography, history, Duke basketball (men's and women's),
and eating.*
*
Luis's first Wikipedia edit under his current user name dates to Feb. 2007.
Like any good pedant, he has also been making minor spelling and grammar
corrections anonymously for many years.*
*
So, as you can tell, we are extremely excited about having Luis on our team
and wish him a warm welcome. *
* *
*Cheers, *
* *
*Geoff*
--
Geoff Brigham
General Counsel
Wikimedia Foundation
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[...]
"It began with reference to a newspaper article about a country church
building with an electric beer sign hanging right over the front
entrance. The building had been sold and was being used as a bar. One
can guess that some classroom laughter started at this point.
The college was well known for drunken partying and the image vaguely
fit. The article said a number of people had complained to the
church officials about it. It had been a Catholic church, and the
priest who had been delegated to respond to the criticism had sounded
quite irritated about the whole thing. To him it had revealed an
incredible ignorance of what a church really was. Did they think that
bricks and boards and glass constituted a church? Or the shape of the
roof? Here, posing as piety was an example of the very
materialism the church opposed. The building in question was not holy
ground. It had been desanctified. That was the end of it. The
beer sign resided over a bar, not a church, and those who couldn’t
tell the difference were simply revealing something about
themselves.
Phædrus said the same confusion existed about the University and that
was why loss of accreditation was hard to understand. The real
University is not a material object. It is not a group of buildings
that can be defended by police. He explained that when a college lost
its accreditation, nobody came and shut down the school. There were no
legal penalties, no fines, no jail sentences. Classes did not
stop. Everything went on just as before. Students got the same
education they would if the school didn’t lose its accreditation. All
that
would happen, Phædrus said, would simply be an official recognition of
a condition that already existed. It would be similar to
excommunication. What would happen is that the real University, which
no legislature can dictate to and which can never be identified
by any location of bricks or boards or glass, would simply declare
that this place was no longer "holy ground." The real University
would vanish from it, and all that would be left was the bricks and
the books and the material manifestation.
It must have been a strange concept to all of the students, and I can
imagine him waiting for a long time for it to sink in, and perhaps
then waiting for the question, What do you think the real University is?
His notes, in response to this question, state the following:
"The real University, he said, has no specific location. It owns no
property, pays no salaries and receives no material dues. The real
University is a state of mind. It is that great heritage of rational
thought that has been brought down to us through the centuries and
which does not exist at any specific location. It’s a state of mind
which is regenerated throughout the centuries by a body of people
who traditionally carry the title of professor, but even that title is
not part of the real University. The real University is nothing less
than
the continuing body of reason itself.
In addition to this state of mind, "reason," there’s a legal entity
which is unfortunately called by the same name but which is quite
another thing. This is a nonprofit corporation, a branch of the state
with a specific address. It owns property, is capable of paying
salaries, of receiving money and of responding to legislative
pressures in the process.
But this second university, the legal corporation, cannot teach, does
not generate new knowledge or evaluate ideas. It is not the real
University at all. It is just a church building, the setting, the
location at which conditions have been made favorable for the real
church
to exist.
Confusion continually occurs in people who fail to see this
difference, he said, and think that control of the church buildings
implies
control of the church. They see professors as employees of the second
university who should abandon reason when told to and take
orders with no backtalk, the same way employees do in other corporations.
They see the second university, but fail to see the first."
[...]
The primary goal of the Church of Reason, Phædrus said, is always
Socrates’ old goal of truth, in its ever-changing forms, as it’s
revealed by the process of rationality. Everything else is subordinate
to that. Normally this goal is in no conflict with the location goal
of improving the citizenry, but on occasion some conflict arises, as
in the case of Socrates himself. It arises when trustees and
legislators who’ve contributed large amounts of time and money to the
location take points of view in opposition to the professors’
lectures or public statements. They can then lean on the
administration by threatening to cut off funds if the professors don’t
say what
they want to hear. That happens too.
True churchmen in such situations must act as though they had never
heard these threats. Their primary goal never is to serve the
community ahead of everything else. Their primary goal is to serve,
through reason, the goal of truth."
[...]
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Pirsig, excerpts from the Chapter 13.
Hello everyone,
Wikimedia DC has just published its annual financial report for the 2011-12
fiscal year (which covers the period from October 2011 to September 2012).
The report is available on our chapter wiki at
http://wikimediadc.org/wiki/Annual_financial_report_(2011–2012), and a copy
will be uploaded to meta shortly.
As always, any questions or comments are very welcome!
Cheers,
Kirill
--
Kirill Lokshin
Secretary | Wikimedia District of Columbia
http://wikimediadc.org | @wikimediadc
Language is identity! Would you like to tell those People that it is not bad when they lose their language. As I mentioned, I am a member of a linguistic minority, too, and I would feel like my human rights where taken if someone tells me I should learn another language because mine is not so much worth. Language is culture and is human right, everybody has the right for his language.
What is your mother tongue? If it is English it is easy for you to tell the world to give up their languages in favor of English.
And besides, supporting minor languages mostly always supports bi- or trilinguism because you speak the majority and minorty language(s). Multilinguism is very beneficial for children. They can learn much easier new languages when they have two mother tongues. And in a world where multilinguism is getting more important this might be a real useful side effect.
And what do you mean by “have so little information stored in them”? Just because they are not as far developped as the main languages doesn’t mean they carry zero information. In America there are Indian languages that have more names for the flowers in their environment and whether they are toxic or not than the biologist can’t give latin names for them. As language minorities mostly live in rural areas they are perfectly adapted to their environment and in their linguistic world/lexicon there are more concepts and ideas than people from the cities have. It’s big culture goods we can’t risk to lose.
Von: geni
Gesendet: 18. Februar 2013 22:58
An: Wikimedia Mailing List
Betreff: Re: [Wikimedia-l] New proposal for a wiki Project!
On 18 February 2013 16:33, Kevin Behrens <kevin_behrens(a)hotmail.de> wrote:
> Hello!
>
> I have started a proposal for a new wiki project: WikiLang (meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiLang). It is about endangered languages and >language documentation/decipherment. It is a very important step in order to save our linguistic diversity which is ongoing faster than >the extinction of animals.
Why? Most of the languages in question have so little information
stored in them that even if we assume a total loss of that information
(which is unlikely) that downside will be massively outweighed by the
upside of easier communication between people.
--
geni
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Hello everyone on Wikimedia-l
My name is Victor, I am storyteller at the Wikimedia Foundation in San
Francisco, and I've been a volunteer editor since 2005:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Victorgrigas
I have an idea that I'd like to propose:
Since Wikipedia is open and collaborative, I thought that video
collaboration should also be left open to the community, so I just wrote
this on the Village Pump Idea Lab:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(idea_lab)#Community-Dr…
It is a proposal to create a forum where anyone can propose ideas that
should be made into video. Those ideas can be polished and then a producer
who is willing to volunteer (Wikipedian or otherwise) can read through
scripts and produce the content they want to.
This forum would serve video production on Wikipedia generally, not just
for the work that i'm doing.
Thanks for reading & I'd be happy to know your thoughts.
--
*Victor Grigas*
Storyteller <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Knv6D6Thi0>
Wikimedia Foundation
vgrigas(a)wikimedia.org
+1 (415) 839-6885 x 6773
149 New Montgomery Street 6th floor
San Francisco, CA 94105
https://donate.wikimedia.org/
Hi all,
A speculative question: what's the most novel, thought-provoking, or
otherwise interesting piece of research you've seen, either
a) using information from Wikipedia (ie extracted text), or
b) looking at Wikipedia itself as a subject?
I'm giving a talk next month which will cover research about/with WP
and other WM projects, and I'm curious to know what people think would
be most interesting as examples. I've a few, but the things I find
interesting are often unusual :-)
Suggestions appreciated!
Thanks,
--
- Andrew Gray
andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk
Hi all,
Scholarship applications for Wikimania 2013 in Hong Kong are being accept.
The application window is one month (through 22 February).
Wikimania 2013 scholarship is an award given to an individual to enable
them to attend Wikimania in Hong Kong from 7-11 August, 2013.
Both types of scholarships will be available this year. Partial
scholarships will cover travel expenses to Wikimania, capped at 50% of the
estimated air fare from your nearest international airport according to
[[wm2013:Getting to Hong Kong]]. Full scholarships will cover round-trip
travel, dorms accommodations as arranged by the Wikimania Team, and
registration for Wikimania 2013.
Applicants will be rated on the following four dimensions:
1. Activity within Wikimedia (on-wiki and off-wiki) - 50%
2. Activity outside of Wikimedia and other free knowledge/software projects
- 15%
3. Interest in Wikimania and the Wikimedia movement - 25%
4. Fluency of English language - 10%
To learn more about Wikimania 2013 scholarships, please visit
https://wikimania2013.wikimedia.org/wiki/Scholarships
To apply for a scholarship, you can fill out the application form here:
https://scholarship.wikimedia.hk
If you have any question, email us at wikimania-shcolarship(a)wikimedia.org .
Good luck!
Simon Shek
Community coordinator - Wikimania 2013 / Wikimedia Hong Kong
wikimedia.hk
Dear fellow committed Wikimedians and Chapter enthusiasts,
Last weekend a number of Wikimedia Chapters Association Council
members, two trustees from the WMF board and some welcome guests,
worked together to review in detail the current progress of the
association and feedback given by the WMF board.[1][2]
A total of nine Council members took part with several being able to
join using video conferencing and etherpad. There were a number of
firm recommendations, along with a series of immediate actions. The
meeting minutes will be issued later this week and everyone can
preview all the notes taken during the meeting.[3][4] The meeting was
fully open and the Council will continue to use open public
communication channels, in preference to closed lists or meetings,
recognizing recent community feedback on how best to meet our shared
values of openness and transparency.
As the Council chair, I can summarize these points as follows, and
will be happy to refine and discuss these with an open dialogue on
meta[4]:
1) A small set of action teams have been agreed with a focus on
external deliverables including chapter peer reviews, providing advice
and analysing chapter practices. The time-frame is *three months* for
key deliverables and all are expected to be part of the Milan
conference in April.[3][6]
2) The recruitment of a Secretary General is parked until such a time
as the council is confident of securing a budget and there is a strong
consensus on the immediate necessity of such a role or its equivalent.
Legally incorporating the Association will also be similarly parked,
as the driving factor would have been the need to employ staff.
3) The previously planned elections for Wikimedia Chapters Association
Council Chair will be brought forward one month, to starting this
week. A separate note/email will explain the process of one week
calling for nomination statements, questions and a similar time for
the council vote.
Thank you to those who have engaged already with feedback and those
that were available to take part in the meeting last weekend. For
those Council members and interested Wikimedians who were unable to
take part, I welcome your feedback on this pragmatic way forward as
early as possible, and I encourage you to lend a hand with the action
teams, as they will benefit your chapter directly.
A special thanks to Wikimedia UK for offering to host the London
meeting, including Richard Nevell's support with practical logistics
all weekend, including much needed coffee and sandwiches. I look
forward to seeing many Chapters helping the action teams and future
activities of the Association, with suggestions and practical offers
of staff support. :-)
Links
1. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Chapters_Association#WMF_Boar…
2. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Chapters_Association/Meetings/2013…
3. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Chapters_Association/Meetings/2013…
4. http://etherpad.wikimedia.org/ep/pad/view/WCA/latest
5. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Chapters_Association
6. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Conference_2013
Thank you,
Fae
--
Ashley Van Haeften (Fae) faewik(a)gmail.com
Chapters Association Council Chair http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WCA
Guide to email tags: http://j.mp/mfae