On 3 July 2010 18:29, Keegan Peterzell <keegan.w...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hm, well, I think this gets back to David Goodman's point, one which I agree > with. > > Yes, the only absolute commitment the WMF has in the grand scheme of things > is to provide the physical resource to host the projects. However, this all > began as a side project on Bomis servers. If it had gone belly up before > the Foundation was established, volunteers would have forked the content and > found other hosting providers, not just tossed in the towel. I think it is > fair to say that volunteers would still do this- locate and finance the > resources independently. It would cause splintering, because of anticipated > control issues,and all that comes with forks and the prongs each being > pointy. > > I guess my point is that ultimately I would rather see the WMF focus on > using its resources to provide free educational materials as actively as > possible and disseminating them as far as possible rather than build a war > chest. If the shit were to hit the fan, volunteers would still step up.
When Bomis was hosting it, it was just a handful of servers. Volunteers wouldn't be able to fork the site and keep things going at anywhere near the level they are at now - if the WMF doesn't have the funds, neither will the community. You can't host a top 5 website on a server in your spare room. _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
