Thanks Joseph for the links. It's more clear now. I think I need to clarify something: I'm not against asking the big corps to pay. If they are using a significant amount of our computational resources (=donors money) to make even more money, they should pay. And thank you for improving the movement's financial security. I don't oppose the general idea.
That being said, what worries me are the details: * WMF is creating a company (LLC) and contracts that company, this means less transparency. This is the first time I think in the history of the foundation AFAIK that WMF is creating a company for legal reasons (I'm sorry if I missed anything). * That company is contracting another company for engineering work (even less transparency). We have lots of engineering resources at WMF. * As the result, for the first time, code produced by donors money is closed source and inaccessible to public (or at least I couldn't find the code linked anywhere) * I find it ethically wrong to use AWS, even if you can't host it in WMF for legal reasons, why not another cloud provider. * There wasn't a period for giving feedback for example about the choice of cloud provider or anything, suddenly it came out ready. The rumors about it have been going around for months. * This has not been communicated properly to the community, I find this lack of communication and transparency concerning and insulting. Hope what I'm saying here makes sense. On Thu, Jul 9, 2020 at 7:02 PM Todd Allen <toddmal...@gmail.com> wrote: > I tend to agree with this. I'm one of the first to criticize WMF when they > deserve it (I wish they didn't as often!), but I see nothing wrong with > consumers of huge amounts of data being asked to chip in to cover the costs > of providing it. That is, of course, provided that there is never any fee > for use of the API for users of data in regular amounts, but every plan > I've seen thus far accommodates that. > > Todd > > On Thu, Jul 9, 2020 at 7:15 AM Ad Huikeshoven <a...@huikeshoven.org> wrote: > > > Hi, > > > > Great news: the WMF is going to charge the tech giants for using the API > > millions of times each day. Nothing in the free licenses we use obligate > us > > (that is we in our movement) to provide an API for free as in beer. It is > > part of KAAS: Knowledge As A Service, part of the strategic direction > > chosen in 2017. > > > > Thanks for your understanding, > > > > Ad Huikeshoven > > > > On Sun, Jun 14, 2020 at 8:33 PM Amir Sarabadani <ladsgr...@gmail.com> > > wrote: > > > > > Hello, > > > Today I stumbled upon this public phabricator ticket [1] created by > > someone > > > from WMF starting with: > > > "My team is creating bi-weekly HTML Dumps for all of the wikis, except > > for > > > wikidata as part of the paid API project." > > > > > > I have so many questions: > > > - What is the "paid API" project? Are we planning to make money out of > > our > > > API? Now are we selling our dumps? > > > - If so, why is this not communicated before? Why are we kept in the > > dark? > > > - Does the board know and approve it? > > > - How is this going to align with our core values like openness and > > > transparency? > > > - The ticket implicitly says these are going to be stored on AWS ("S3 > > > bucket"). Is this thought through? Specially the ethical problems of > > > feeding Jeff Bezos' empire? (If you have seen this episode of Hasan > > > Minhaj's on ethical issues of using AWS [2]). Why can't we do/host this > > on > > > Wikimedia infrastructure? Has this been evaluated? > > > - Why is the community not consulted about this? > > > > > > Maybe I missed announcements, consultations or anything, forgive me for > > my > > > ignorance. Any pointers is enough. I also understand diversifying our > > > revenue is a good tool for rainy days but a consultation with the > > community > > > wouldn't be too bad. > > > > > > [1]: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T254275 > > > [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5maXvZ5fyQY > > > > > > Best > > > -- > > > Amir (he/him) > > > _______________________________________________ > > > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: > > > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and > > > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l > > > 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> > > _______________________________________________ > > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: > > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and > > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l > > 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> > _______________________________________________ > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l > 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> -- Amir (he/him) _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l 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>