Our users are the world in general; the decision not to make our license -NC is a basic part of our fundamental understanding. If were were asked by a commercial entity to provide a service beyond what we could afford, then I can see the need for some sort of arrangement, for it is better to provide information even for money than not to provide it. But this is not the case--we can afford what is asked of us. While people access knowledge through commercial systems, we should provide the knowledge. The world is as it is. It the same principle as WP Zero.
It is important that we never become a commercial player in the world of information. Let others do what they will, our mission is to support the idea that knowledge can be free, and we prove it by what we do. Nor am I concerned that our information might be used by people who oppose our principles. We ask just the same of our contributors--that the information they contribute may be used for ''any'' purpose. We ask them to acknowledge that honest information is always and unreservedly a good thing in itself. Even if a industrial enterprise should pervert out information, even if a government should use our knowledge to pervert democracy, the basic provision of the knowledge is our purpose. The evil will use it for evil, as they use everything else for evil. If we believe our principles ,that the good will use - will use it is more important, and that we not discriminate in favor of what we think to be good is part of the principle of honest reporting as distinct from advocacy. We Our customers are the world in general; the decision not to make our license -NC is a basic part of the fundamental understanding. If were were asked by a commercial entity to provide a service beyond what we could afford, then I can seethe need for some sort of arrangement, for it is better to provide information even for money than not to provide it. But this is not the case--we can afford what is asked of us. I hold no brief for the commercial world and might not even describe myself as a supporter of the capitalist system. But while people access knowledge through commercial systems, we should provide the knowledge. The world is as it is. It the same principle as WP Zero. It is important that we never become a commercial player in the world of information. Let others do what they will, our mission is to support the idea that knowledge can be free, and we prove it by what we do. Nor am I concerned that our information might be used by people who oppose our principles. We ask just the same of our contributors--that the information they contribute may be used for ''any'' purpose. We ask them to acknowledge that honest information is always and unreservedly a good thing in itself. Even if a industrial enterprise should pervert out information, even if a government should use our knowledge to pervert democracy, the basic provision of the knowledge is our purpose. The evil will use it for evil, as they use everything else for evil. If we believe our principles, that the good will use it is more important, and that we not discriminate in favor of what we think to be good is part of the principle of honest reporting and honest research as distinct from advocacy. Advocacy is good also. The WMF and the people who support it should engage in advocacy for free knowledge. That the Foundation supports this freedom, and opposes those who would restrict it, is important; one of the justifications for having the Foundation is to concentrate and mobilize the power of our users for effective action. This too is part of our mission, but it is separate from providing access to the encyclopedia. On Mon, Jan 18, 2016 at 2:22 AM, Legoktm <legoktm.wikipe...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hi, > > On 01/16/2016 06:11 PM, Denny Vrandecic wrote: > > To give a bit more thoughts: I am not terribly worried about current > > crawlers. But currently, and more in the future, I expect us to provide > > more complex and this expensive APIs: a SPARQL endpoint, parsing APIs, > etc. > > These will be simply expensive to operate. Not for infrequent users - > say, > > to the benefit of us 70,000 editors - but for use cases that involve tens > > or millions of requests per day. These have the potential of burning a > lot > > of funds to basically support the operations of commercial companies > whose > > mission might or might not be aligned with our. > > Why do they need to use our APIs? As I understand it, the Wikidata > SPARQL service was designed so that someone could import a Wikidata > dump, and have their own endpoint to query. I'm sure that someone who > has the need to make millions of requests per day also has the technical > resources to set up their own local mirror. I don't think setting up a > MW mirror would be quite so simple, but it should be doable. > > One problem with relying on dumps is that downloading them is often > slow, and there are rate limits[1]. If Google or other some other large > entity wanted to donate some hosting space and bandwidth by re-hosting > our dumps, I think that would be a win-win situation all around - they > get their dumps and can directly rsync from us, as well as taking > pressure off of our infrastructure and letting other people access our > content more easily. > > [1] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T114019#1892529 > > -- Legoktm > > _______________________________________________ > 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> > -- David Goodman DGG at the enWP http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:DGG http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG _______________________________________________ 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>
