Hi! I have been recently investigating business models for community based and collaborative online services. You do not have to reinvent the wheel (or discussions), there is some experience in this field from other projects. So, to move the discussion away from just opinions and feelings...
I would suggest that anyone interested in monetizing APIs check how MusicBrainz (https://musicbrainz.org/) is doing it. An open encyclopedia for music metadata. Their data is all open, collaboratively made, and APIs are free to use, but big users are asked to pay. In this way they are getting money from Google, for example. You should contact them and check how they feel about issues raised here: Do they feel that they get strings attached for receiving money from Google? How do their contributors feel about them getting money in this way? How do they achieve that big players pay, but community projects, researchers, and others do not? What is the process to determine that? In fact, I am CCing Rob from MusicBrainz here. You could also check Crossref, another non-profit serving APIs to the community and commercial entities. To my knowledge their approach is that they provide free API for everyone, but if you require uptime and SLAs then you pay. CCing Geoffrey from Crossref. Another project to look at is Arxiv, an archive of academic articles' preprints. Their model is to look from which universities/organizations the most requests are coming based on IPs and then contacting them and suggesting that they pay/donate for their service. In this way the service is free for users, but organizations behind big groups of users are paying for service to be online for everyone. Mitar On Sat, Jan 16, 2016 at 1:23 AM, Pete Forsyth <petefors...@gmail.com> wrote: > I'm interested to hear some perspectives on the following line of thinking: > > Lisa presented some alternative strategies for revenue needs for the > Foundation, including the possibility of charging for premium access to the > services and APIs, expanding major donor and foundation fundraising, > providing specific services for a fee, or limiting the Wikimedia > Foundation's growth. The Board emphasized the importance of keeping free > access to the existing APIs and services, keeping operational growth in > line with the organization's effectiveness, providing room for innovation > in the Foundation's activities, and other potential fundraising strategies. > The Board asked Lila to analyze and develop some of these potential > strategies for further discussion at a Board meeting in 2016. > Source: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Minutes/2015-11-07 > -Pete[[User:Peteforsyth]] > _______________________________________________ > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines > New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, > <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe> -- http://mitar.tnode.com/ https://twitter.com/mitar_m _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
