[Foundation-l] Jimmy Wales in the news

Fri Mar 7 12:53:22 UTC 2008

On Fri, Mar 7, 2008 at 1:36 AM, SlimVirgin <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
>  There are also the hundreds of unpaid man hours Jimbo has put into the
>  project. Not to mention that if he'd retained ownership of Wikipedia,
>  he might now be worth an absolute fortune.
>
I hear that a lot, but I tend to doubt it.  Wikipedia was a
money-losing proposition from day one.  It almost surely would have
required significant venture capital just to reach the point of
profitability (presumably through ads), much more money than the
"mom-and-pop" Bomis allegedly had.  When you subtract all the unpaid
work that goes into Wikipedia which wouldn't be there were this a
for-profit enterprise (in on-wiki help, but especially in off-wiki
help during those early years), the expenses go way way up.  And from
what I've both heard and experienced in terms of venture capitalists,
they would have demanded the kind of spending which would have put the
profitability point even further out, as in post-IPO.

At this point I wish Bomis had retained ownership of Wikipedia,
because at least then it wouldn't be such blasphemy to criticize or
compete against it.

As for the unpaid man-hours, there are a lot of people you can say
that about.  Anyway, this is a silly conversation to be having about a
professed Randian.  Surely if Jimmy donated something to the
foundation he did it because he thought that action would most benefit
him, and not as an act of altruism.