Cade Metz on Roger McNamee, The Register probes the facts on Jimbo's big donor Options

[Kato]

Cade Metz in The Register on Roger McNamee and Wiki's big donation

Why would someone donate $1.35m to Wikipedia?

[thekohser]

This article is an absolute MUST READ for every dedicated Wikipedia Reviewer. Cade Metz is my hero.

I hope that the Register prints my comment:

Go ahead, search Google on the phrase "Representative governing body factor" and IRS Publication 557 won't be far behind. Then, you can learn that for an organization to claim "public support", it should be mindful of the following:

PUBLIC SUPPORT includes:

Direct or indirect contributions from the general public, including contributions from an individual, trust or corporation, but only to the extent that the total contributions from such individual, trust or corporation, during the 4-year period immediately before the current tax year (or substituted computation period) are not more than 2% of the organization's TOTAL SUPPORT for the same period.

I'm not sure how $1.3 million is going to be 2% of the Wikimedia Foundation's four-year total support, unless 2008 sees a $59 million grass-roots fund-drive MIRACLE. Not likely!

Not to worry, though. I'm sure Jimbo and his accountant Michael E. Davis (yeah, the guy who was found by an Illinois court to owe over $800,000 to a jilted investment partner) have figured out a way to make this all appear to be "gentle, loving" support from a disinterested philanthropist. Move along, now. Get back to writing Jimbo's encyclopedia, everyone. Don't you worry about the financial authenticity of the Foundation.

[Daniel Brandt]

The New York Times yesterday quoted Florence:

Florence Nibart-Devouard, the chairwoman of the Wikimedia board, who has never met Mr. McNamee, did not sound enthusiastic.

"It's not a huge concern right now, but I am not comfortable with the concept," she said, of venture capitalists consistently making donations to the foundation. "I would much prefer a varied diverse base of donors, some could be large, some could be long-term friends, who help in finding new friends. I hope the foundation won't rely on these relationships."

She said that she had proposed a resolution, passed recently, to require that any donation larger than 2 percent of revenues be approved by the board. And she said she would "make some noise" if a venture capitalist were to try to become a board member.

In the same NYT piece, Jimbo very strongly stated that Wikipedia will always remain nonprofit, and he will continue to show the door to greedy venture capitalists.

I think there's a conspiracy going on, and Florence's reaction is reasonable, but too little and too late. She's in over her head. Jimbo is pushing bullshit to distract from the conspiracy. It's sort of hard to tell, because Jimbo is almost always unbelievable. Maybe that's by design!

Here's how it will unfold:

Wikimedia Foundation's budget keeps increasing by hiring more staff. A year from now, another huge McNamee-arranged donation is dangled in front of them, and they have no choice but to accept it because they have to meet their payroll. Around then, Godwin steps in and announces that the Foundation cannot meet the public support test and has to reincorporate as a for-profit, or at least spin off a for-profit the way that Mozilla Foundation spun off Mozilla Corporation.

Jimbo makes more noise about how he had no idea, blah, blah, and it's unfortunate that the Board didn't see this coming and sound the alarm. But the law is the law, and we have to follow Godwin's lead on this.

As soon as the payroll is shifted onto the Corporation budget instead of the Foundation budget, all disclosure disappears overnight. A privately-held corporation has to pay taxes, but they don't have to disclose anything other than their Board of Directors and the name and address of a registered corporate agent.

Now the McNamee donations are ready to be treated, privately, as an "investment." Ads start appearing on Wikipedia. Professional editors are hired. BLP victims are offered a no-questions opt-out if they don't want a bio. (With professional editors, the Corporation is clearly a publisher, not a service provider. You can't put up with lawsuits when you're an attractive target due to the fact that there's money in the bank.)

McNamee takes his cut. Jimbo flies first-class everywhere, and even upgrades his flashlight to a better model. Everyone is happy.

Actually, I hope it all happens this way. It's much more reasonable than the mess we have today.

[thekohser]

Sorry to pull up such an old thread, but it may be worth a few minutes of your time to listen to Roger McNamee at a recent TED spin-off conference talk. Honestly, I don't know enough about the Internet to know for certain what HTML 5 is, but I do know enough about people to recognize delusional bullcrap when I hear it.

[EricBarbour]

He talks like that at TED, but turns around and says this to the Harvard Business Review.

As soon as the first fund was invested, however, Silver Lake abandoned its unique strategy in favor of financial engineering. Limited partners rewarded this reversion to the norm with huge commitments, making Silver Lake’s general partners fantastically rich. Sadly, the downside was the end of a pioneering investment strategy that, if widely adopted, might have enabled the United States to compete on a global scale more effectively.

Why did we let our vision die? Midlife venture capital turned out to be hard work. It also did not play to the strengths of some of Silver Lake’s partners. We could have sucked it up, like the Rolling Stones, and done the right thing. Instead, we pulled an Everly Brothers and had a big fight that resulted in my leaving the firm.

America has enormous creative energy, but its industries are dominated by lawyers and accountants, not product people. Thirty years of financial engineering and short-term profit optimization has impaired the ability of American companies to innovate. Silver Lake had a chance to change that. We were succeeding. Then we gave up.

TED is a massive lake of shit. It still amazes me that people pay thousands of dollars to be fed
a load of propaganda.

[Cla68]

Is a t-shirt and hooded sweat shirt appropriate attire for giving a formal presentation at a conference? Is it even appropriate attire for an attendee at a conference?

[Somey]

...I don't know enough about the Internet to know for certain what HTML 5 is, but I do know enough about people to recognize delusional bullcrap when I hear it.

The basic flaw in his premiss here is that he's lumping all "internet-enabled devices" together into a single category and using the term interchangeably with the word "computer." From the perspective of a tech investor, or even an actual entrepreneur, that might be an acceptable (though short-sighted) way of looking at things, particularly if you're only concerned about consumer technology. But it's not how businesses look at things, and consumers aren't all just a big herd of cattle whose actions can be managed and easily predicted, either.

It was an interesting speech in some respects, but if I were really cynical, I might well conclude that McNamee's support for Wikipedia was (and continues to be) based on his wanting to keep the internet small and limited, because that makes it easier to commoditize "content" - putting aside the fact that doing so is not good for world culture, which I assume he doesn't care about in the slightest (having now heard what his band sounds like).

Is a t-shirt and hooded sweat shirt appropriate attire for giving a formal presentation at a conference? Is it even appropriate attire for an attendee at a conference?

We're in the "Occupy Wall Street" era now, so millionaire investors had better wear long hair, t-shirts and hoodies if they don't want to get jeered at by people they wish they could still be like.

[EricBarbour]

which I assume he doesn't care about in the slightest (having now heard what his band sounds like).

[thekohser]

which I assume he doesn't care about in the slightest (having now heard what his band sounds like).

Two points:

1. The wife is the lead singer.

2. At 3:31, there's that tell-tale feedback blip that you hear in conference rooms over the P.A. system. Funny that they couldn't do a re-take of that.

Question for the tech gurus here -- what is that sound, anyway? I think it's aliens.

[carbuncle]

In a strange coincidence, here is today's item on McNamee: Job-Killing Plutocrat Loves Occupy Wall Street.

[Kelly Martin]

HTML5 is the latest model in the series of screwdrivers that have been cleverly adapted for driving nails.

[thekohser]

HTML5 is the latest model in the series of screwdrivers that have been cleverly adapted for driving nails.

But what's that feedback beep, Kelly? I thought you of all people would know what that is.