[Foundation-l] Opinions/suggestions for "outside" members of the board?

Mon Jun 19 20:07:03 UTC 2006

On 6/19/06, Lord Voldemort <lordbishopvoldemort at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 6/19/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> > Comments on these names are welcome... as are further ideas of course!
>
> Hey, didn't I hear Bill Gates will be free soon. ;-)  --LV

I'd LOVE to see Wikipedia used to force Creative Commons and FSF to work
together. We're the 800-pound (or 800000-pound) gorilla in the category
"users of the GFDL" and I'd really like to see formal license compatibility.

Using the Wikimedia Foundation board as a mechanism to do so would be
wonderful.

Other suggestions (always interested in non-American equivalents):

   - Michael Hart or Greg Newby, Project Gutenberg (Newby is *great*)
   - Karen G. Schneider, kgs at bluehighways.com , (former?) Internet
   Librarian for American Libraries Online,
http://www.ala.org/alonline/and the Coordinator of the Librarian's
Index to the Internet (LII),
   http://lii.org/ (IM: LIIchief)
   - Roy Tennant, http://escholarship.cdlib.org/rtennant/ , creator and
   editor of Current Cites, http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/CurrentCites/
   - Tim O'Reilly, O'Reilly Publishing (if we want to get into making a
   dead-tree version)
   - Larry Page / Sergey Brin
   - Al Gore

I don't know the right names, but someone who's been really good at
advocating for improved resources/outreach into the third world, third world
civil rights etc. would also be a great addition outside of the "obvious"
choices.

I'm reminded that when Steve Jobs wanted to start Apple Stores, he got the
CEO of The Gap on the board--someone who knows nothing about computing, but
everything about retail. So what would be the equivalent for the Wikimedia
mission? I would think that, say, a former top UN official could be very
good for Wikimedia; someone who would know everyone in all the countries of
the world and know how to manage a multicultural coalition. Kofi Annan?
Madeleine Albright? I'm sure people can come up with better ideas.