[Foundation-l] bylaws (second call)

Wed Aug 16 09:50:56 UTC 2006

On Sun, Aug 13, 2006 at 02:33:33PM +0200, Anthere
wrote:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Bylaws_update
> 
> It is still here.  Summary : we need to update the
> bylaws. On the page mentionned above, a new text is
> proposed. Please comment.
> 
> Do we want regular dumps to be more frequent ?

Yes. This is one of the main objectives of the
wikimedia foundation.  The more copies of our content
exist, the more likely it is that the content will
survive and still be useful in 100 years.

I think we've all learned the lesson of the library of
Alexandria.

> 
> Could it happen that all attempts to automatically "feed" on the content 
>   may be blockable ? 

Never! We need people to be able to access that data.
If you're worried about bandwidth, we could always
torrent our daily dump[1] ;-) (I wonder how well that
would work?)

> And that a requirement be made to "pay" to get the 
> content in a decent fashion ?

I don't think we have a license to do this, even if we
would want to.

> 
> Doing dumps is currently free. But one may argue in
> the future that dumps actually requires employee
> working time. And one might argue that this cost
> money and that this service should require by
> default financial participation.

Because our content is licenced to use under the GFDL,
I think we must provide the dump at no cost or at most
the administrative costs of making the dump. Even if
our lawyer were to tell us that legally we're not
quite obligated to do so, I still think we have the
moral duty to do so.

read you soon,
	Kim Bruning

Disclaimer: I could really use those dumps to do
research on how wikipedia really works at
this point in time. We'd also be less dependant on
toolserver.

[1] Yes I know we're currently having trouble with
getting a dump done even just once a month. I can
dream, can't I?

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