[Foundation-l] Corporate Social Responsibility

Fri Nov 19 21:30:43 UTC 2010

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On 19/11/2010 11:42, Fred Bauder wrote:
>> On Fri, Nov 19, 2010 at 14:46, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> On 19 November 2010 13:41, Abbas Mahmoud <abbasjnr at hotmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Does Wikimedia Foundation engage in Corporate Social Responsibility?
>>>
>>>
>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_social_responsibility
>>>
>>> It appears to be something for for-profit corporations to do to appear
>>> less rapacious.
>>>
>>> It's not clear what its applicability is to a 501(c)3 charity, given
>>> that you only get 501(c)3 by being of social benefit in the first
>>> place.
>>
>> Yes, but it would be good if we would have "Social Contract", like
>> Debian has: http://www.debian.org/social_contract
>>
> 
> We are not short of similar firmly held policies, such as neutral point
> of view. They are mostly written out in our policy pages. What would you
> add or emphasize?

I would add policies for the WMF like a duty of transparency about
money. I still don't understand how the WMF can state for example:

"The Wikimedia Foundation and Mike have figured out severance that
we all hope will protect Mike and give him time to think about what he
wants to do next. The terms of the severance are confidential: we
won’t talk about them now, or in the future. But you can rest assured
that the Wikimedia Foundation wants to see Mike continue working to
advance people’s online freedoms: everybody would like to see him
continue making an important contribution." [1]

As I understand, and please correct me if I'm wrong, this is public
money. There should be no "confidential" secret about where it ends, and
how much, and why.

I don't want to stir a polemic, but I really have no clue about how I
should understand such decision to hide facts.

[1]: I couldn't find the original mail by Sue Gardner but here's a link
to an immediate answer quoting it entirely:
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2010-October/061693.html

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/

iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJM5uyDAAoJEHCAuDvx9Z6LAHMH+gMJJzFG4+hyGhuzfTw1bLYz
FW9NZiERaVArsMC6YA27ps0AK/ubX2/+qMGT/E11wlMX2ptBul82QQywZmQp+qSj
fQ7+rbd5j4h1FAN/mYId2IlJ7g8JFwZ2jAD7UZyKfCIqKHWqBZQC8DiQ2W6DbTs2
iGGA8NDhlrUCO1YE8N/lz5cmGJ2mKGE/EcYwEvmQ+lsrXX99OsqHpEjx2a3VVRuq
C4uM9XvrQWUb++h7nmO2/cTLxqJ1TdTiooEXIvzEHeEhjEUjbxBP3syJYaz6QFn6
ENYzV5aqhGVivB+u+zXq4mAFGYj1vaq0UAep5bInXdOKkL9kUbPGdEMQnp7Y/cs=
=6q+Y
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----