Let me just flip the perspective. The tech giants are leveraging their
resources to serve the knowledge we create to even more users. In a way,
they are partly furthering our mission. So rather than solely using our
resources as a cost, it could instead be viewed upon as a multiplier. Now
this is just a hypothesis that I have no facts to back up, but it would be
nice if this project had this factor as a part of the analysis, if only to
prove it wrong.
To boil it down: are we sharing the knowledge to fewer or more people due
to the tech giants?
If it is fewer, they should just be stopped rather than asked to pay.
If it is more, there is an argument for allowing it to incur costs, this is
after all our mission. Of course, if the cost is cannibalizing our capacity
to serve knowledge to others then some more complex evaluation needs to be
done. As far as I am aware no such analysis has been published. If I am
mistaken, a link would be appreciated.
Jan Ainali
Den tors 9 juli 2020 kl 20:06 skrev Benjamin Ikuta <benjaminik...@gmail.com
>:
>
>
> I agree, the lack of transparency is quite concerning, as is the use of
> AWS.
>
> I sure hope we're not going to be producing closed source code!
>
>
>
> On Jul 9, 2020, at 10:19 AM, Amir Sarabadani <ladsgr...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > 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)
> >>>> _______________________________________________
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> >>>> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
> ,
> >>>> <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
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> >
> >
> > --
> > Amir (he/him)
> > _______________________________________________
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