[Foundation-l] [Commons-l] We should permit Flash video playback

Mon Jul 23 23:15:38 UTC 2007

Hoi,
I have been part and observed the  relation between Kennisnet and the
Wikimedia Foundation from the start. And I can safely tell you that we will
not ever merge with Kennisnet. The missions of the two organisations are too
diverse. Teachers in the Netherlands told Kennisnet that they would be happy
when Wikipedia would be more reliably available and, its performance was
improved prior to our first contact.

Many of the organisations that we could be "tangentially involved with"
provide opportunities. Opportunities that may mutually benefit us and them.
Many of these organisations that you dismiss as marginally relevant are
marginally relevant as long as we do not appreciate the opportunity they
offer and do not develop a relation with them. When we do contact such an
organisation, when we build a relation, it may be that what was originally
about the prevention of vandalism develops into a hosting agreement. It is
very much about having an open mind and build relations slowly but surely.

When you reach out to other organisations, it is a fallacy to think that
they always want to use OUR resources. Often they want us to use THEIR
resources and often they have a lot to offer. I am involved in projects
where serious money is spend on Open / Free content and software. I can
safely say that there are many organisations that we can relate to,
organisations that would benefit from us and that we would benefit from,
organisations with whom we can cooperate / partner within the confines of
what we aim to achieve.

When you have established a relation, a partnership, it is important to
maintain such a relation, it will develop as it may. Kennisnet is one
organisation, there are many more organisations that could become as
relevant.

Thanks,
     GerardM

On 7/24/07, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen <cimonavaro at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 7/22/07, GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hoi,
> >
> > You ask for examples of organisations that I had in mind when I wrote
> about
> > partnering. Here are some, there are many more.
>
> <snip long list of projects we could be tangentially involved with>
>
> > With organisation like the FSF and the Creative Commons we already have
> many
> > links. Several of our people are involved with them. Organisations like
> > these provide a global role, there are many organisations that provide a
> > similar role on a national level. The Dutch chapter for instance is
> working
> > with national organisations to make people and organisations more aware
> > about issues like copyright and licenses. We ask for material that is
> > currently lacking in the Dutch Wikipedia. It is the partnering of many
> > organisations that to will make this a success.
>
> Perhaps I am misunderstanding the meaning you attach to "partnering".
> Some of the above (including the ones I snipped as marginally relevant)
> we should certainly outreach to, and help them use our content. Projects
> like
> FSF and CC certainly don't match our goals in a way that could permit
> anything that might be termed "partnering", much less merging... For one
> thing, the FSF and CC partnering and/or merging ought to come first ;-)
>
> With FSF and CC it is definitely essential that we keep avenues of
> discourse open, but I would certainly be wary of going whole hog and
> partnering or merging with either of them. AIUI CC is itself self-limiting
> itself from doing anything active in any sphere where wikimedia is
> doing stuff, except perhaps in the legal sphere, anyway. In an ideal
> world it would be nice if wikimedia foundation could facilitate better
> interoperability between these two licencing juggernauts of course ;)
>
> >
> > These are many organisations we could collaborate or partner with. I do
> not
> > know any organisations that we should merge with, I think this would
> only
> > becomes clear when we build a working relationship. When we find that
> > activities have an overlap that make the continued existence of
> activities
> > in both organisations redundant, we could merge the activities. This
> might
> > lead to a merging of organisations but this would only become clear in
> time.
>
> Again, I don't think I would be quite so bold as to speak about
> partnering, much
> less merging. Co-operating and helping other projects is well and good.
> Partnering requires a bit more. People have talked a lot about how lucky
> we are to have the Kennisnet connection. It might be useful to the
> discussion
> to define clearly what our relationship with them is. In that case I
> personally
> think the best way to describe it is indeed partnership. I would be very
> interested to hear what the experiences with Kennisnet have been like, and
> how the relationship is projected to develop in the future. I could be
> very
> wrong, but it appears to me from the outside that Kennisnet still has its
> own independent mission, and merging it to wikimedia simply is not in the
> cards in the foreseeable future.
>
> --
> Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]]
>
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