[Foundation-l] Latest board resolutions

Sun Jul 30 20:26:54 UTC 2006

Michael R. Irwin wrote:

>Oldak Quill wrote:
>  
>
>>On 29/07/06, Michael R. Irwin <michael_irwin at verizon.net> wrote:
>>    
>>
>>>The major asset of the project/program/community/foundation is the
>>>FDL'ed databases, GPL'ed software, and community of contributors,
>>>developers, and other volunteers.
>>>
>>>A new Foundation could be back up and operating at current levels within
>>>a quarter or two with an aggressive public funding drive for hardware.
>>>      
>>>
>>If a Wikimedia chapter in, say, Sweden were to run servers much like
>>the ones in France. Would it be feasible to get these running as
>>database servers quickly, in case your scenario were to happen?
>>
>>So if Wikimedia and its assets were taken down in the US, those in
>>other countries could quickly replace them?
>>    
>>
>Bottleneck would probably be the professional expertise and effort the 
>WMF pays for routine reliable staff effort in organizational matters and 
>for administrator and development support.  
>
Only if our existing experts are in jail.

>Perhaps if the Swedish/X Chapter is organized properly; a management 
>reserve or emergency operations plan could contracted for and funded in 
>advance such that sufficient Swedish currency is in Swedish/X financial 
>accounts (earning appropriate returns relative to required on demand 
>liquidity) to hire/contract the WMF's technical and administrative staff 
>to fly to Sweden for a few months and setup and maintain the new servers?
>
Why just Sweden?  Brazil could be another alternative.  More than one 
alternative would be even better.

>Once the WMF or new equivalent in U.S. was back up and running they 
>could rehire the technical and administrative staff and reestablish 
>operations in Florida or equivalent.  
>
Going back straightaway into the jaws of the problem is a little risky.

>To be really efficient the 
>individual staff contracts could require that all useful tourist photos 
>be submitted to the commons at the earliest reasonable convenience  
>prior to receipt of final performance bonus.
>
That's just like some companies who believe that they have a say over 
what their employees can do in their own homes.

>Perhaps this could structured in advance as part of the operations 
>plan.   Setup the independent Swedish 
>chapter/corporation/foundation/nonprofit in advance with read only 
>mirror service kept up to date with a periodic database update via ..... 
>what? DVD? Digitial tape?  Backups were still under a gigabye back when 
>I messed with off-site backups.
>
Why not multiple distributed backups.

>Obviously the above is a layman's view of how to structure a reserve 
>operations capacity for transitional purposes.  The legal beagles and 
>the Board would have to do the international contracts so it is legally 
>fullproof.   The technical staff would have to figure an efficient 
>mirror or startup capacity and how to transfer data reliably and 
>routinely such that they could flyin and buy more hardware, bandwidth, 
>install the latest snapshot and have the Swedish site up and operational 
>in minimun time.
>
>Maybe the WMF could ask for technical proposal and bids from any 
>associated international chapters with an appropriate non profit 
>organization in place and pick the best overall deal for the WMF's 
>donated funds to be expended upon.
>
The direct funding for that back-up facility should ideally come from 
sources in that country.

>The situation is fraught with possibilities.  Probably depends mostly on 
>what the Board and the WMF staff feel would be useful, reasonable 
>(responsible cost effective expenditure of donated funds) and airtight 
>from a legal standpoint.
>
There is no such thing as an air tight legal opinion.

>I still have a hard time envisioning serious legal difficulties 
>considering the statement of conditions each contributer agrees to prior 
>to submittal of material and the fact that we now have a paid operations 
>staff ready and willing to delete alleged offending material or 
>situations and investigate in detail later.  It would seem like any 
>serious slander or copyright or other legal issues mostly belong to the 
>contributor as long as the WMF is careful to respond with due diligence 
>to complaints and/or particularly to subpoenas and court orders.
>
The circumstances that would trigger a move to servers in an other 
country would be highly unusual.  A simple copyright infringement 
lawsuit is not likely to get that serious.  Having paid staff working on 
search and destroy missions would compromise the argument that they are 
only running an ISP.  I have no problem with due dilligence in the 
circumstances you describe, but even that should be guided by 
even-handedness rather than panic.Complaints clearly need to be 
investigated, but immediate deletions based on allegations without 
standing should have the investigation precede the deletion.

>I think the above offsite backup would be a reasonable thing to begin 
>considering at this point even disregarding legal concerns.  
>
These are still Plan-B emergency considerations.

>I mean the rest of the world does not want Wikimedia projects to be 
>offline indefinitely just because some terrorist organization with a 
>collective I.Q. greater than 25 sneaks a few dirty (radioactive dust, 
>smallpox, EMP, power grid failures, rampaging domestic politicians, 
>whatever) bombs/incidents into key U.S. cities in the 95% of shipping 
>containers that are not currently inspected prior to entry into U.S. ports.
>
True enough, but one has to remember the large number of forces working 
to thwart the terrorists by matching their I.Q.  This only proves that 
25+25<50.  Emirate ports may be a little more effective than U.S. ones.

>Heck, if I want to do some research after hearing rumors from the Media 
>Moguls about some disaster in Florida (or other key internet hub 
>location like say New York; California {San Andreas fault}; the Midwest 
>{Yellowstone Supervolcano}; random super tsanamis or asteroid stikes;  
>it would suit me just fine if up to date mirrors capable of handling the 
>full emergency world wide load from me and other gawkers were online 
>while the WMF Board and staff followed emergency directions to the 
>nearest interstate evacuation route.
>
To think that we will soon have another asteroid to wipe out the 
dinosaurs is pure wishful thinking.

>OTOH, some people view a little redundancy in information systems and 
>emergency preparedness system wide as a complete waste of resources.   
>Better to just keep a spare Wikipedia DVD, dehydrated dihydrogen oxide, 
>and last year's portable computer with proper power supply adapter in 
>the back of your vehicle and forget about kibitzing over jammed comm 
>systems in the unlikely event of an emergency. 
>
Wasn't the internet invented in the first place to provide redundancy 
for military communications?