Anthere's Weblog

A frequent question asked by journalists, or even more frequently, by businessmen, is but what is your business model ?

Errrr, well, excellent question...

In a couple of weeks, we'll publish financial statements, but to make it simple, last fiscal year, our revenue was 1,38 millions dollars. A drop of water when we consider the Foundation is running a top 15 website (in fall 2006, we oscillate between the 10th to 15th most visited website in the world).

Most of this revenue is spent in hardware, bandwidth costs. Expenses totaled $611k, with

• $189k for hosting
• $107k for payroll
• $110k depreciation

And we purchased $425k of hardware

Estimation for this fiscal year are a total of $750k-$1M planned ($400k of hardware already spent) and estimated expenses around $1.75-$2M.

I have been exploring the various ways the Wikimedia Foundation could make money in a sustainable way, without any damage (in terms of image) for the wikimedia projects. In short, how to establish stable and scalable revenue streams ?

Most of our income currently comes from the gift economy

In short, donations. Donations of people, just unknown people who happens to love the project and realise it needs money to run.

We started the concept in 2003, with the Brion Vibber Laptop Fund, then the following years collected money during fundraisings

• December 2003: ~30,000 USD
• July 2004: ?
• September 2004: 60,000 USD
• February 2005: 95,000 USD
• August 2005: 243,000 USD
• January 2006: 390,000 USD
• December 2006 ???

We also now get a regular revenue stream from donations of about 40 KUSD per month.

Our average donation is around 20 dollars. A grassroot project funded by the grassroots. On one hand, that sounds cool to say this. On the other, when one sees the pile of money distributed every year by big american charities, there are reasons to think we are missing something.

One of the way we wish to explore is the matching donation system. There are two types of donations systems here. In the first one, when an employee makes a donation, his gift can be matched by his employer, providing that the charity is registered in the company list of charities to support.

The second case is more generic. Imagine a situation where all donations made during a day are matched by a company. When individual donations reach 100 000 dollars, we'll get 100 000 more from the company. That might require to "recognise" the effort made by the company, as well as inform donators of which company will match his gift.

Imagine all pages of Wikipedia with a little line on top-right, "Today, Microsoft matches your gift. Make a donation to support us". That could be cool.

Reality strike, after several days spent contacting big companies and big organizations, we still do not have a single agreement for matching donations.

It is also unknown how many editors will consider that "advertisement" and complain. I guess a big mention of a famous open-source company will make people at ease, whilst a big mention of political party will not make it look so good. Maybe is that up to us to avoid asking certain companies which may make editors and readers unconfortable.

Accessorizing strategy

A big classical strategy for many open source projects. Concept: sale of items, with use of the brand. Tee-shirt, coffee mugs, key ring, cap, car bumper, mouse pad, teddy bear, you name it...

Now, let us be practical. If you are invited at the conference, would you use 1 kg to transport your toiletries, and the remaining 19 kg to carry promotional items ? Say 50 tee-shirts. One tee-shirt is 20 dollars, with 4 dollars of benefit. Overall benefit for a broken back and 50 teeshirts sold: 200 dollars.

Right. Not sure this can be expected to solve the issue of a multi milions budget.

But from a promotional perspective, it is very cool to go to conference with a wikipedia teeshirt. Please visit our : cafepress site

The Patronage strategy

A company/organisation may financially support us

• to push certain languages or projects (e.g. a regional languages)
• To support collection of content (eg, digitization)
• To support changes of copyright or ip laws
• to weaken a competitor, through plummeting of the competitors’s market

It may or may not be acceptable for the community, depending on what should be supported. For example, if we accepted money to implement children filters, the community may object to the concept of wikipedia providing filtering.

Also, the money could be proposed to implement a task which does not fit in our mission statement (such as political lobbying).

As of today, we only got one such grant, meant to help the development of WikiJunior. For all I know, the money mostly went to support the global infrastructure. However, I think in the future, we'll have more such help and these will have the benefit of pushing certain projects, which are never felt as the ultimate priority and as result always fall behind. The main problem with that strategy is that it request someone originally outlining a project, writing the grant application, someone to contact grant makers, and someone to do the job if there are string attached. Most of this will never get done entirely by a volunteer. Which means that we first need money to hire people, who will submit grant appplications...

The merchant model

The concept is to sale some of the byproducts of the website and collect the benefits. Example, publishing of DVD, Paper versions (Wikireaders,Wikipress, Wikijunior). The model surfes on the « long tail ».

In itself, *great* idea.

The main problem with it is the legal responsability and the risk for the projects to be taken down if the Foundation finds itself untangled in a big copyrighted-born lawsuit. This is essentially why the Foundation does not publishes wikireaders or DVD.

Brand licensing strategy

The idea is to charge other companies for the right to use our brand names and trademarks in creating derivative products.

The brand issue is a tricky one. If a local association wants to use the Wikipedia logo, and asks permission, the Foundation will not "charge" the association. Rather the idea is that brands are granted

• Free use for promotion of wikimedia projects
• Free use of media
• Free use for non profit organisations
• against royalties for commercial uses

This strategy is of limited use as of today, but expansion is to expect.

The drawbacks of this strategy are essentially the following ones. First, there are many unauthorized uses. Most of the time, they come from a misunderstanding and can be fixed simply by a discussion. Sometimes, not. Until now, we have not chosen to go legal against misuses, but at some point, we might have to do it. Second, if we want to actually use our trademarks, we need to own the trademarks. Which means additional costs in terms of securing them and to pay people to manage them.

The service strategy

In this case, the revenu model is based on a service revenue stream rather than a licence revenue stream.

Example of service we already provide: the datafeed (live access to updated Wikipedia content rather than use of the free (and often broken) monthly dump)

In using our free content as part of a global product, a distributor limits his costs as well as increase the global value of his product. He consequently have significant interest in using our content. However, he needs updated content, free of installation hassle. Which is a service we can provide him.

Services are limited as of today, but expansion could be expected. A business manager would probably be required to really develop this model.

Another service we *could* provide, but are not providing, nor are likely to provide, is related to use of Wikis, installation of a wiki etc... There are two reasons for limited input. First, Jimbo Wales company Wikia, is providing free hosting of wikis. Second, it is not really a type of service mentionned in our bylaws. We often receive requests for support and can only recommand names of developers.

The advertisement model

• This* is the big question. Many websites only survive thanks to advertisement. Accepting to put ads on articles would largely solved our financial needs due to our very large traffic and perfect fit with the content provided.

However, a significant part of the community is against putting ads on Wikipedia, for various reasons, amongst which failure of neutrality or ethical principles. A community even forked in the past because a rumor circulated... the spanish wikipedia is only slowly recovering from this fork in summer 2002.

Various solutions have been proposed

• Ads on articles pages is the most widely rejected solution, though there are a few supporters
• An opt-in system. Readers will have the opportunity to say "yes, I want advertisement". This would likely require the reader to be identified by an account, and to login. Most readers are unlikely to have an account, so it is not clear this solution would bring much money.
• An opt-out system. Readers will have the ads by default, but can request not to have the ads displayed. Most editors also feel this solution intrusive and it is unlikely to be retained
• Advertisment on search pages. This may be the least controversial solution, as it can not be said to damage our concept of neutrality, and might on the contrary bring a benefit to the reader. It has not been approved though.

The endowment strategy

We may diversify our income sources in setting up an endowment. Operating costs, all those unsexy expenses such as payroll, travel expenses, phone costs etc... could be paid thanks to the endowment. Donors could focus on giving money for the *fun* expenses (such as Wikimania, or distributing DVD's in schools) or expenses that make sense to them (such as hardware costs).

The endowment strategy is a very likely one to consider for our future. It is one that could free our time from seeking money every couple of months, and one that could ensure that at any time, we have enough money to ensure the basic minimum for the websites to work.

What we do not envision

There are a couple of business solutions, sometimes used by open source projects, that we do not envision

• Subscription or fee to access content - we must not put financial barriers to access to knowledge. So, access to the website is free and will stay free. This will be added in our bylaws
• Proprietary licensing of content (even partial) - against our very mission, since we went information to be available to the largest number.
• Monetization of consumer data or consumption patterns - very unethical from our perspective
• Affiliation (link exchanges) - assimilated to advertisement
• PR agencies paying to publish their aproved biographies - funny solution, but I mention it because we are receiving proposals of various types, asking us how much money is asked for to put a biography on wikipedia...

This is a quick overview. Most promising solutions sounds to be matching donations system, monetization of our trademarks, with a pinch of service; But who knows... I intend the board to discuss that in the future. More in a few days, after publication of our financial statements

Anthere

I was on the move this week. I went far away, to Nigeria. More precisely in Abuja (the current capital), for a conference (Digital World Africa 2006 Conference ICTs for Education and Development). After the conference, I had a dinner with several people, including my panel chair. As we were talking, he asked me what I would remember from my visit.

---

1) The need for governmental/official approval for everything people do. Even when there is no real need to do so on a practical basis.

2) The very formal approach and the decorum. The speakers are "distinguished speakers". The participants or visitors are "delegates". The lengthy thank-you speeches before the conference. And after. The titles.

3) Seeking balance. After a series of presentation have been made, the "floor" (not the audience, the floor) is asked for questions. The chair selects 4-7 people. People very formally present themselves, their title and responsabilities, then ask their questions. Only when all of them have spoken do the (distinguished) speakers talk. But what may not appear so obvious is the way people in the "floor" are chosen... First, ladies are always asked to speak up. If only one woman raises the hand with 20 men, the woman will be selected. In France, we call that "positive discrimination" and feminists frown deeply in front of that. In Abuja, it seems to be respect. Inviting the ladies (the chair does not ask women to speak up, he asks "ladies") is certainly worth it ! Most of those who commented were full of wisdom and energy. But aside from restoring a certain balance (inviting the less numerous women to speak up), less visible is the balance of religion (if a catholic is invited to speak, the next should be muslim), or the balance of geographical origin (if a nigerian from north is invited to speak, the next should be from the south) etc... That sure makes the job of chairman or chairwoman is very diplomatic one. Mister Chairman also commented that in most conferences, it began with a catholic prayer and ended with a muslim one. Balance again...

4) African time. One the second day, the conference was supposed to start at 9H. I put my clock at 8h. Immediately fell asleep again, to wake up at 8h45. Ouch. Hurry and get there 15 minutes late. Why hurry ? The conference room is basically still empty. The conference will finally start around 10h. African notion of time.

5) Mama. During the first day, I noticed this rather old (maybe 70) lady, in very bright african clothes, standing in the first row. At some point, she gets up and talks. Immediately, the room sinks in reverencious silence, ponctuated by applause and heartely offered laughs. I feel a deep respect in everyone. I understand little of what she says, but the little I do, seems full of wisdom to me. The second day, she speaks at a panel. I feel deeply the full attention offered. Not only expectation as I felt at Wikimania, whilst waiting for Lessig or Stallman to talk. No, I feel also a deep love from the room. A tender respect for a wise elder. Joy. It is very strong.

5) Laughing for sharing. Speaking of which, I appreciated the general attitude of people I met. They were friendly, talkative, willing to share. A reference for friendly people is to me what people do in a lift. If they turn around, or pretend not to see you, or even look for stuff in their nose, they are not friendly. If they smile, say hi, or even start chit-chatting, that's a good sign ! Later in the week, someone told me that in some areas, by default, when one meet someone, both people are on a friendly basis (that's the case in France), so one does not need to interact specifically. In other areas, by default, the other is a potential ennemy. So before any serious exchange, one needs to symbolically check if the friendliness is here. Which may be simply saying to a man "you have a nice tie" or saying to a woman "I like your earings" or to smile at a kid and comment on the pretty doll she is holding.

Nigerian striked me as very smily people, who discussed in the lift... but there was more. They laugh a lot. Not a small dry noiseless laugh. A big hearty one. Which lead publishing they were the happiest people on Earth. Maybe not correct. Europeans and Americans interprete "laughing" as a gesture to show happiness. Is that always so ? Apparently, the laugh there was more a social gesture to qualify sharing. Saying "I agree with you" or "I hear what you say" or "are not we together and being well together".

6) Oh, talking about sharing. After each panel, 4-7 people were selected to ask a question. Most did not ask any question. They only talk. Commented. It was an odd feeling to me. As if these people terribly needed to "talk" rather than to ask others to "answer and comment". I liked that.

7) The satchel. Beautiful one. Any one who regularly goes to conference and accumulates ugly plastic conference satchel would have like this one

8) Anyone ever saw Sj in a formal suit ? I had not. I now did. Anyone ever saw Sj in african gear ? I had not. I now did. I need to retrieve the picture

9) Seen: the encyclopedia Britannica in a glassy bookshelf. For sale. 60 kilos. Limited supply.

10) Hilton using counterfeits. Uncool. But the bottled water in the room, Voltic, certainly did look like a counterfeit of Volvic water. Name, bottle design. Even the blurred picture on the bottle reminds of Volvic volcanoes. A bad point for Hilton. But what to say ? Most people at the conference obviously did not get the subtil differences between free of charge, free as in free speech, open source. Discourses about spam or children filters were clearly not their problem (yet) either. They are too busy struggling to install computers and internet connections. But they will soon discover these delicacies themselves.

11) oh, and yes. Singers. The group of singers at the beginning of the conference. Singing the anthem and other songs. Beautiful. And worth reminding in an ICT conference that whatever the good of technology, the real songs come from humans and are interpretated by humans.

The two Wikimania... moms

After I wrote A mission: providing free knowledge, Delphine commented with a detailed blog, in which she argues that the reference to "free as in free beer" is in reality one of the most important terms in the mission statement, as it garantees the content will stay accessible to everyone.

Because without breaching the free as in speech statement, the Foundation could decide that all access to the sites are only possible to people who have paid, say 100 dollars. The only thing the Foundation would have to do then is provide a machine-readable Transparent copy to anyone who pays the 100 dollars.

I'll have to agree with that.

This nevertheless does not solve my issue which is that the Foundation bylaws only garantees a "free as in free beer" access for the website itself. The "free as in freedom" license garantees the page content may be reused, access to its "code" is possible, access to edit history as well.

However, the Foundation does not garantee that a whole project/language (enwikipedia, dewikinews, frwikibooks...) full dump or partial dump will be forever free of charge. And as of today, the Foundation is not particularly making efforts to ensure the dumps are technically reusable (Delphine is correct in reminding that the biggest project/language dumps are already so big that individuals may not really use them as of today. And html dumps were just an experiment till today). In short, even if we do not meet the "financial" barrier, we are already meeting this technical barrier, which limits the reuse of our content.

Overall, the Foundation is respecting a certain engagement toward editors if each article is considered a document under GFDL. If the whole project/language is considered a document under GFDL, things are getting more fishy.

A solution might be one which has been discussed a lot in the past, but never officially implemented: Terms of Use.

The terms of use are contractual agreements between an organisation and users of a service. They generally detail restrictions on what each party is and will be responsible for in relation to the service. They may give rules concerning copyright and other legal details. Terms of Use may be set up in order to let an audience know specifically what can and cannot be done to the work with or without the creator's permission. It is, therefore, extremely important that terms of use be as specific and accurate as possible.

For example, editors currently agree to give their work under GFDL licence (for example). Could we not imagine that the Foundation in turns agree to say that free of charge dumps will be provided at least once a month? The dumps provided could either be global, or only encompass a certain category of articles.

The Foundation may very well change its terms of agreement later, but it will have to inform editors of such a change. Right now, its mission goes beyond its simple statement. There is a non-spoken promise.

I have given myself the mission of updating the Wikimedia Foundation bylaws.

And a couple of days ago, I had a thought. The sort of thought that gives you a bad chill in the back, going up to the neck and twisting your mind with fear.

I was looking at the mission statement.

"Wikimedia Foundation is dedicated to the development and maintenance of online free, open content encyclopedias (...) and other collections of documents, information, and other informational databases in all the languages of the world that will be distributed free of charge to the public under a free documentation license such as the Free Documentation License (...). The goals of the foundation are to encourage the further growth and development of open content, social software WikiWiki-based projects and to provide the full contents of those projects to the public free of charge. "

Free content is a matter of liberty, not price
This statement insists *very much* on providing content free of charge. But not so much insists on the free as in freedom, which is what unites all wikipedians.

See the Free Software Definition here. Transcripted for Wikimedia projects, we get something like:

Free content is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of free as in free speech, not as in free beer.

Free content is a matter of the users' freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the content. More precisely, it refers to four kinds of freedom, for the users of the content:

The freedom to read the content, for any purpose (freedom 0).
The freedom to get the knowledge from the content, and adapt it to your needs (freedom 1).
The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2).
The freedom to improve the content, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits (freedom 3).

The full content should always stay fully and easily accessible.

Access to the source is a precondition for this. For Wikipedia and other wikimedia projects, access to the source is essentially access to the webpage itself. The content may be accessible from various scales. From the webpage itself (use your mouse and drag and click to copy/paste the content of the article) to the full database.

Access to the webpage itself is cool. This is for the journalist to complete a news article. This is for the student to copy for doing his homework.

But to really fullfill our mission, the full content should always stay fully and easily accessible. Making a DVD or making a book is only really feasible with quick and easy access to the entire database. If the person interested in making a DVD has to retrieve the pages one by one, reuse of the content, whilst still possible, will in reality become a real chore.

If at some point, access to the full content is restricted either because of the addition of a technical barrier, or because of the addition of a financial barrier, then the Foundation will be failing to the global spirit uniting the thousands of contributors of the website.

Could that happen ?

DataFeed for a fee. Dumps for free until ... ?

The whole content may be retrieved only by two means. Spidering the site itself (and thus consuming bandwidth, which has a cost for the Foundation). Or using the dumps.

As of today, dumps are available for free. They are done roughly once a month (though when a language dump fails, it is usually necessary to wait for the next month). Using a dump is not so easy...
In december 2005, Tim Starling made a html dump, which is much easier to use. No update has been provided though, and I have not heard any further html dump planned.

Spidering the site is discouraged. Sites are sometimes blocked for doing so. It is recommanded to ask for a datafeed agreeement. Live feeds are available that provide more up-to-date content and eliminate the requirement to install new dumps. This service involves a financial arrangement as it requires developer time and the use of the servers.

What I fear could happen in the future is that blocking sites mirroring our content occur more and more frequently, with a strong incentive for paying the datafeed. Hence setting up a financial barrier for reuse.

Of course, the dumps are free... but if the argument was made that datafeed were against a fee, to balance the bandwidth use involved, and the salary of the developers setting up the datafeed... why would not the argument be made that the dumps also require a payment ? After all, making the dumps is also taking several hours of developer time. Developers now employees of the Foundation (so arguably, making the dumps require Foundation money through the payroll).

As soon as a payment is asked, there is a financial barrier to reuse. Whatever the amount. And the barrier will be higher for those with little money... who may precisely be those who needs the content primarily.

I already hear the argument... "but we'll ask money only from those sites with money. The commercial ones. Non profit websites will get it for free if they ask". This is already what we are doing with the spidering (we do not block non profit websites, we block commercial mirrors).

The problem I have with this argument is simply... that it does not fit with the licence we chose. Our licence allow reuse without restriction. Included for commercial reasons.

Low update frequency of the dumps

Naturally, it may be that no money is ever asked for the dumps, in which case, my whole argument falls. But there are other means to limit reuse. For example, instead of doing the dumps once a month... they might get done once every 6 months, or once a year. One may get for free the outdated content. The updated content might be available with a datafeed... against a payment.

Another possible directions to consider...

A dynamic website with no dumps for the stable version ?

There are frequent discussions about stable versions. One step which might be perceived as a "good idea" is to set up an independant website, with the "qualified" version on it, whilst Wikipedia stays the live website with open editing. Thousands of editors work on this "stable" version, with in mind the license. Technically speaking, it may have no sense whatsoever to set up a wiki to host the stable version. Instead, the website might be a dynamic one, fetching and distributing the page automatically. In which case, the source code is not visible any more. The dumps are still available, but only for the live version of Wikipedia, not for the "stable" version. Ultimately, the "stable" version is a fork, with no visible source code, nor dumps, nor spidering possible. Pages may only be copied one by one... But editors are still working on what they believe is a free project.

The new website is free of charge, but not free as in freedom. A liberty was lost in the process. The text is still under gfdl, but to make a DVD of this, one better go up early. Or negociate with the Foundation. Which implies... the content is actually under Foundation control. Not free.

What about an update of the Foundation mission ?

To go back to my mission statement.

"Wikimedia Foundation is dedicated to the development and maintenance of online free, open content encyclopedias (...) and other collections of documents, information, and other informational databases in all the languages of the world that will be distributed free of charge to the public under a free documentation license such as (...). The goals of the foundation are to encourage the further growth and development of open content, social software WikiWiki-based projects and to provide the full contents of those projects to the public free of charge. "

That mission statement garantees that the content will stay accessible free of charge to the public. Nothing else.

Today is today. Tomorrow is tomorrow. Do you know who will be running the Foundation next year ? In 2 years ? In 10 years ?

Anthere

in this blog, I could not help but react at "And in fact the Wikimedia Foundation works perfectly alright without democracy, as does the Nobel Foundation. The former only needs to keep the servers running. The latter only needs to find the best scientists. Both tasks can be accomplished with a handful of administrators and a network of experts. These small tasks are independent of the whole body of article-editing or science that they serve."

Why reacting ?

Well, first because I do not think that the Foundation is working perfectly alright. Second because I object to the mission statement as described by Lars. I (and all Foundation people I presume) tend to see it much larger. But looking at the stated the mission of the Foundation bylaws, I can not blame him.

"Wikimedia Foundation is dedicated to the development and maintenance of online free, open content encyclopedias (...) and other collections of documents, information, and other informational databases in all the languages of the world that will be distributed free of charge to the public under a free documentation license such as (...). The goals of the foundation are to encourage the further growth and development of open content, social software WikiWiki-based projects and to provide the full contents of those projects to the public free of charge. "

It would be difficult to draft a more fluttery mission statement. We have to fix this...

Then, it came to my mind that... the premise that the Foundation does not need members because it is a Foundation and Foundation are used for purposes where democracy is not an issue... struck me as totally aside the point. Because the Foundation is not a Foundation.

We need members because our goals are actually complex and we need a very diverse set of attitude, because our goals are politically loaded.

I then wondered why on earth we were officially a Foundation ? What the differences were between a Foundation... and an association and why do people set up Foundation or Association ? And whether all Foundations were with no members ?

Here are beginning of answers (from Kelly, Xirzon, Cimon, TimShell)

It's more common to see a foundation when the foundation was created to carry out one person's dream especially when that one person is substantially well-funded and where that person wishes to retain permanent control over the organization.

An association, contrariwise, is more commonly used when many people, often with limited resources, want to come together to accomplish a goal. The association format, with membership, is used to pool resources to accomplish what one could not do on his or her own. In a membership society the one individual will not be able to retain control for long, as the other members will generally expect to be allowed to have some say in the running of the organization. Associations often have staff.

There is more control in a non-member foundation than in a member association since there is less chance of outsiders joining and taking over a foundation than a member association. On the other hand, members of an association may be kicked off much more easily if things go wrong.

Foundations are more likely to have staff and are likely to be grant-issuing bodies e.g. the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Eli Lilly Foundation. Apache is called a foundation and has members. FSF also has membership

There's no legal distinction in the US between a Foundation and an association (well, there are at times) but an incorporated association and a foundation are not legally distinguishable except sometimes for tax purposes. They're both not-for-profit charities, corporations not engaged in business for profit and incorporated under statutes intended for that purpose

According to Wikipedia : Foundation (charity) — a kind of philanthropic organization, set up as a legal entity either by individuals or institutions, with the purpose of distributing grants to support causes in line with the goals of the foundation.

Foundations typically dispense money. WMF does not do this. As has been pointed out, the fact that WMF has the word Foundation in its title is a bit misleading. WMF is a non-for-profit corporation that is not really a Foundation, and which is misleadingly named. WMF is more accurately an association.

If we ever develop a sustaining endowment, *that* would be a proper foundation. The foundation (if we had one) would be the holder of our investments and would pay out to the association funds necessary to do its work.

Yesterday, I read this email from Lars, a long time wikipedian. He gives a good description of the creation of the Wikimedia Foundation, back in 2002-2003, which I believe, completes pretty well the historical time I gave at Wikimania, with a focus on the membership issue.

I think it is worth copying below for historical purpose and to comment upon later.

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There was a decision point back in 2002 or so, where Wikipedia was still more or less Jimbo's private property, and the question was where to put it. Many Germans and other Europeans wanted a membership association, but Jimbo went for a foundation. Later (in 2004) the German national chapter was structured exactly like the membership association (Verein) that they had wanted also for the international body. There is a fundamental difference between the two kinds of organization, but I think this was more clear to the Germans than it was to Jimbo or most Americans.

(...)

However, one fundamental requirement for a membership association was also missing. The word "Verein" means union, a get-together of equals. The corresponding verb "sich vereinen" means "to unite", to team up. And there simply was nobody who equalled Jimbo. The German Wikipedians could get together as equals to form their national chapter. Their elected board was only slightly more into Wikipedia than the rest. There was nobody there with the God-like status of Jimbo.

I think the only way Wikipedia could have been turned into a real membership association is if a global "chapter" of wikipedians had been formed in 2002, without Jimbo, and then started to negotiate with Jimbo about the future rights to domain names and servers. As we all know, this didn't happen.

This leaves Jimbo with the decision, and it is a fact that his position is more like that of Bill Gates, Andrew Carnegie, or Alfred Nobel. One day he finds himself in possession of something that should live on after him, and there really is little point in his family to inherit it. What do you do in such a situation? You start a foundation. Its bylaws is your last will. If a board member needs to leave, the rest of the board must find a new board member. Many newspapers are owned by foundations, so it makes sense for a web media venture as well.

The fact that two out of five board members should be elected by the community is merely a curious detail of the Wikimedia Foundation. This is not expected from a foundation. Foundations are used for purposes where democracy is not an issue. And in fact the Wikimedia Foundation works perfectly alright without democracy, as does the Nobel Foundation. The former only needs to keep the servers running. The latter only needs to find the best scientists. Both tasks can be accomplished with a handful of administrators and a network of experts. These small tasks are independent of the whole body of article-editing or science that they serve.

Lars