Talk:Policy governance manual

While I have issues with some of the topics (but not with others), I have a serious problem with 1.5, both in its mention of a) Independent Chapters (the meaning is not clear--does that mean that they are not under the auspicies of the Board or this document); and b) advocacy (given our status as a 501 (c) 3, political advocacy is a very dangerous thing and can cause us to lose our tax-free status). Both require further elaboration. Danny 02:14, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

We can write more in length to describe what a local chapter is, and specifically mention that they are not affiliates of the Foundation, submitted to this document, but essentially associations of users who generally share similar goals with the Foundation.

With regards to advocacy, you are right the term is touchy. I nevertheless put it there precisely to discuss its implications. Just yesterday, there were mentions on the foundation list that we should petition the US government to change copyright law. And not a very long time ago, the Foundation agreed to sign two petitions regarding access to knowledge. So, whilst we should not use the term "advocacy" perhaps, there is a reality that is that we are becoming a political force. Should we insist on that (even if we use lighter words, such as "becoming one of the reference in the free software free content mouvement"), or should we not ? When does it really become a risk ? Anthere

License

The page states: "All projects of the Wikimedia Foundation are collaboratively developed by its users. All contributions are licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License (except Wikinews, which is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.5), meaning that their content may be freely used, freely edited, freely copied and freely redistributed subject to the restrictions of that license."

Some time ago, Wikibooks NL choose to dual license their contributions with GFDL/CC-BY-SA. I can imagine that there will come more diversity in the licenses when we run longer. I suggest to replace this by something that is referring to the licensing policy. This would make it possible for a project to choose CC-BY-SA instead of GFDL if they like so. As long as it falls withing the scope of the Licensing policy. Effeietsanders 09:10, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

MediaWiki

I agree that the development of MediaWiki is no END on itself. I suggest to include it as a mean in the promotion of the development of the wikimediaprojects. At the end, the development of the software either serves quality/quantity goals, as it wants to ease the way to edit, easy the way of fighting vandalism, ease the way of controlling quality etc. Effeietsanders 09:32, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

yup. I have an idea actually. We could add in plain letters the four wishes of year 2007 as an END in itself. More sustainable organization, quality, being seen as a non profit, reach out to developing countries populations. ant